
Class. 
Book. 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSH^ 



THE 
UNDERSTANDING HEART 



The 
Understanding Heart 



BY 



SAMUEL M. CROTHERS 



BOSTON 

AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 

1903 



rmUmAWof 

OCT 21 )mi 

CneynHHrr fntwv 
CLASS Ol XXa No. 

COPY a 






Copyright 1903 
American Unitarian Association 



Published October ^ iqos 



INTRODUCTION 

Wordsworth describes the man with 
" understanding heart." His thoughts 

"From a clear fountain flowing, he looks 
around 
And seeks for good ; and finds the good he 
seeks." 

He is no mere sentimentalist; nor is 
he a cold rationalist. He believes in the 
instincts of his own heart; yet he is 
anxious to preserve 

" His sanity of reason not impaired." 

He has reverence for inherited faiths, yet 
he would subject them to that scepticism 
through which alone the true may be dis- 
tinguished from the false. 

There are those whose ideal of truth- 
seeking is that of a heartless understand- 



Introduction 

ing. They take for granted that they are 
living in an unfriendly universe, in which 
the affections of the soul meet nothing 
but disappointment. They seek to pre- 
pare themselves for clear seeing by dis- 
crediting all that belongs to their emo- 
tions. 

There are others who do not believe 
in any such line of cleavage between the 
faculties of their own nature. They be- 
lieve in themselves as profoundly as 
they believe in the Universe. They be- 
lieve in great spiritual ideals of love and 
duty and worship. In these they trust 
primarily on the testimony of their own 
hearts ; but they find their faith stimulated 
and sustained by their experience. To 
them religion is not 

" A history only of departed things, 
Or a mere fiction of what never was. 
For the discerning intellect of man, 
When wedded to this goodly universe 
In love and holy passion, shall find these 
A simple produce of the common day." 
vi 



Introduction 

Those who have come to this point of 
view find in the formal creeds only sug- 
gestions, and not satisfactory answers to 
their questions. What is called "syste- 
matic theology" is altogether too ambi- 
tious for them. They are anxious to 
know not how one doctrine may be 
brought into logical consistency with 
another doctrine, but rather how it may 
fit into this goodly universe, and how it 
may interpret the happenings of the com- 
mon day. 

To minds of this temper the present 
organization of religion in our churches 
seems open to criticism. The criticism is 
friendly and hopeful, but radical in its 
character. The great impression is that 
of vast resources that have not been 
touched, mighty powers that are allowed 
to run to waste. We talk of man as a 
spiritual being ; but how little of his spirit- 
ual energy is recognized, while still less of 
it is utilized ! Religious teachers seem to 
be afraid of religion when it manifests 



Introduction 

itself in unconventional forms. We have 
not yet succeeded in organizing all the 
forces of what we call the higher life. 

The problems of the understanding 
heart are educational. The religious 
nature trres to understand itself and its 
real place in the universe. Now the uni- 
verse is not a fixed quantity. It is con- 
tinually changing. No one form of 
thought can express its reality. The man 
thinking must be free to follow the new 
developments as well as to chronicle the 
old. 

The real problems are those which 
grow out of necessity of continual read- 
justment. How may our ideals be ad- 
justed to the actual conditions which we 
meet? How may our religious inheri- 
tance be harmonized with our fresh expe- 
riences ? How may the institutions which 
have purely spiritual ends be adjusted to 
those which serve our material welfare? 
How may we at the same time live ac- 
cording to the rules of sound reason and 



Introduction 

according to the inspirations of religious 
faith? 

Such questions come to us all. In the 
following chapters I have taken for granted 
that there is need of readjustment, intel- 
lectually and spiritually, if religion is to 
hold its own. This readjustment, how- 
ever, can be no merely formal one. It 
must come through the multitudes of men 
and women who are doing their work and 
entering into all joyous activities with an 
understanding heart. It is through them 
that the religion of the world is being re- 
organized. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



I. Methods of Teaching . . 3 

11. The Sense of Values ... 23 

III. Symbols 37 

IV. Literature and Morals . . 53 
V. Work and Worship ... 75 

VI. The Higher Intelligence . 97 

VII. Moral Discipline . . . . 115 

VIII. On the Study of the Bible 131 

IX. Our Historic Inheritance . 147 

X. How Religion is Organizing 

Itself 167 



Ki 



I 

Methods of Teaching 



METHODS OF TEACHING 

The church and the school-house 
have always stood near one another. At 
one time the school-house stood under 
the shadow of the church. The whole 
process of education was controlled by ec- 
clesiastical ideals. To-day the relative 
positions have been reversed. 

The theory of the school has been en- 
larged, and its methods have been revo- 
lutionized. The church has, however, 
responded only slowly, and under com- 
pulsion, to the influences of the times. 
The result is that there is a strained re- 
lation between the two institutions which 
stand for the development of the com- 
plete man. 

The young men and women Vv^ho grad- 
uate from our schools find many of the 
doctrines of the church foreign to their 

3 



The Understanding Heart 

thoughts. It is not that they actively deny 
them : it is rather that they seem to be- 
long to a different world. The conclu. 
sions rest in the air, and have nothing 
corresponding to them in actual experi- 
ence. 

The same difficulty is experienced in 
attitude of the professed teachers of re- 
ligion. The decrease in the number of 
candidates for the ministry in all our col- 
leges is no accident. It is a part of the 
conflict between the present condition of 
the church and the existing state of secular 
education. 

A young man with a spiritual nature 
and with a genuine ambition for human 
helpfulness goes to college with the inten- 
tion of fitting himself for what he consid- 
ers the most sacred calling in the world. 
It is a great ideal that inspires him. He 
wishes to give himself to the best possible 
work, and he is in no mood to tolerate 
the " second best.** 

In the college he meets men who are 

4 



Methods of Teaching 

devoted to the disinterested search for 
truth. He becomes familiar with the 
habits of grave and severe study. He 
meets men whose callings require no apol- 
ogy, so obviously are they ministering to 
real needs. These men go from the col- 
lege to the professional school with no 
break in their line of activity. It is all 
made of one piece. On the other hand, 
the student of theology seems to belong 
to a different order. His special studies 
seem to be remote and unrelated to the 
things he cares for. Above all, they do 
not seem to be carried on with that free- 
dom and candor that he has learned to 
consider essential. The very term "free 
thought" as used in theological circles, 
sometimes as a term of reproach and 
sometimes defiantly as a party cry, seems 
strange to him. What other kind of 
thought can there be but free thought ? 

If he enters the ministerial profession, 
the same kind of questions await him. 
He is to teach religion ; but what does 

5 



The Understanding Heart 

that mean ? Is there a body of definitely 
ascertained facts to be promulgated ? If 
so, what is it ? Or does spiritual culture, 
like physical culture, mean the develop- 
ment of certain powers in the individual ? 

The main difficulty lies not in doctrinal 
results, but in the methods by which any 
results are achieved. The church has 
not yet shaken itself free from the tram- 
mels of the old scholasticism. It is at- 
tempting to teach religion as nothing else 
is now taught in a good school. 

What was the characteristic of scholasti- 
cism ? We may say that it was concerned 
with the circumference of any subject 
rather than with its centre. Its chief em- 
phasis lay in definition. Shakespeare de- 
scribed it in a sentence : " Define, define, 
well-educated infant.'' 

To put a thought into words, and then 
to subject the words to minute examina- 
tion, to distinguish one form of words 
from another, and to draw inferences 
which themselves depended solely on 

6 



Methods of Teaching 

verbal definitions, — this was an exercise for 
nimble wits. The logical faculty grew 
abnormally acute ; but there was little in- 
quiry as to the correspondence between 
these words and the actual experience of 
mankind. It was as if the mind were in- 
dependent of anything outside itself. 

Sir Philip Sidney contrasts the method 
of the philosopher with that of the poet. 
The philosophers, he says, "go, casting 
largess as they go of definitions and dis- 
tinctions,'' while the poet " beginneth not 
with obscure definitions, . . . but he com- 
eth with a tale that holdeth children from 
play and old men from the chimney 
corner." These endless distinctions and 
definitions formed a part of what Milton 
called " the barbarous ignorance of the 
schools." 

The very word "scholastic" recalls 
what the schools once were. But, when 
we go to the best schools, to-day, we find 
that the method is much nearer that of 
Sir Philip Sidney's poet than that of 



The Understanding Heart 

his formal philosopher. The teacher be- 
gins not with an abstract definition, but 
with the thing itself. The pupil is 
trained to observe, to compare, to appreci- 
ate. The whole subject is not forced 
upon him. He takes only so much as he 
is prepared for, and goes on from one 
partial view to another. The point is 
that it is a view, and not merely a hear- 
say report which is given him. 

This change in the method of teaching 
corresponds to an advance in psychology. 
The old psychology treated the mind as 
if it were an object capable of exact defini- 
tion. There was just so much of it, and 
it could be bounded as one might bound 
a country. The old English ballad, " My 
mind to me a kingdom is,'* expressed the 
idea literally. 

Here is the child, the heir to a king- 
dom. That kingdom is his by divine 
right, but it must be surveyed and its 
boundaries fixed. The kingdom has its 
separate provinces. The different flinc- 

8 



Methods of Teaching 

tions of the mind were spoken of as if 
they were absolutely definite things. 
There was department of the understand- 
ing, the province of the will, and so on : 
these were set down and distinguished and 
divided one from another. 

The modern psychologist knows noth- 
ing of this formal kingdom. He is not 
even sure that any particular person is 
heir to it all. He is not very careful 
about the "spheres of influence" which 
are supposed to belong to any particular 
faculty. He is rather concerned with the 
states of consciousness, and these states 
of consciousness are always changing. 
When he comes to consider these states of 
consciousness, he sees that in every state 
of consciousness there is one focal point 
and there is an ill-defined margin. When 
he speaks of " the field of consciousness,'' 
he no longer speaks as if it were a field 
upon the earth that may be defined and 
fenced oflF: it is rather like the magnetic 
field. When he speaks of the coherence 

9 



The Understanding Heart 

of ideas, he is no longer thinking of a 
fixed and inevitable relation. It is a re- 
lation which is dependent on the forces 
active at the moment. It is more like 
the coherer which belongs to Marconi's 
system of wireless telegraphy. The little 
bits of metal filings are separate. Then 
from afar comes a mysterious influence, 
and the minute particles come together 
and form an electric circuit. Then they 
are shaken apart again, until with the new 
message they once more come together. 
So under successive impulses the mind is 
continually being rearranged. The centre 
of interest is all the time changing. 

Modern education rests upon this vital 
conception of the dynamic character of 
the mind. The teacher does not think 
of a faculty called the understanding 
being at work while the aflFections are not 
enlisted and the imagination is dormant. 
Thinking is something different from that. 
The whole mind is centred upon one 
point. The more complete the concen- 

10 



Methods of Teaching 

tration, the greater will be the accomplish- 
ment. 

In the teaching of religion, a revolution 
is effected when we come to this idea that 
we are dealing primarily with states of 
consciousness and centres of interest. Re- 
ligion is not a subject to be formally de- 
fined : it is a great experience into which 
we may enter. The dogmatist has his 
thought fixed upon the circumference, the 
outer edge of religion. He is jealous of 
all encroachments : he is always eager to 
defend the frontiers. He is ready to tell 
just what is the holy faith which it is 
necessary for every man to believe. 

Catechetical instruction is based on this 
idea. It takes for granted that there is a 
precise and sufficient answer for every 
question. " What is God ? " it asks, and 
the reply is couched in language that may 
satisfy the metaphysicians. The metes 
and bounds of the Divine Nature are 
fixed, and the limits of human responsi- 
bility are indicated. The last things are 
II 



The Understanding Heart 

put first, and the abstract formula pre- 
pared before there is anything to put 
into it. 

The child can be taught to repeat the 
answers correctly. The forms of thought 
may be accepted, and the tradition of the 
church may be handed down. But is this 
teaching religion? Does the child learn 
how to think seriously and freely upon 
the greatest subjects of human concern ? 
Is not the effect rather to deaden the nat- 
ural feeling of wonder and curiosity with 
which he might otherwise look out on the 
world ? Premature ideas have been forced 
upon him, and his own ideas have not 
been allowed to ripen. 

A true method of religious education 
begins with the things near at hand, and 
which already are of vital interest. The 
teacher takes advantage of the circum- 
stances of the child's own life and of his 
natural relations to awaken interest in all 
higher things. It is taken for granted 
that he is already a worshipper. There is 

12 



Methods of Teaching 

something to which he looks up with ad- 
miration. This " trick of looking up " is 
itself a religious experience. It is look- 
ing God-ward. One object after another 
is presented to his view. Each is a sym- 
bol only, but it is a symbol of the highest 
reality. ,The symbols become more spir- 
itual, more profoundly ethical, as he grows 
toward maturity ; but there is no break 
from the beginning of the process to the 
end. At no time does he arrive at a 
complete definition of God ; and yet " him- 
self from God he cannot free," and he 
is continually learning more and more in 
regard to his relations to Him. 

The fixing of attention upon the centre 
rather than on the circumference relieves 
the teacher, also, of his chief embarrass- 
ment in dealing with mature minds. It is 
noteworthy that in the last generation the 
chief anxiety of the defenders of religious 
faith was in regard to the limits of hu- 
man knowledge. Take that word " agnos- 
ticism '' which was accepted as a denial of 
13 



The Understanding Heart 

the possibility of religion. Agnosticism 
is simply the assertion of our ignorance 
upon certain points. We are all agnos- 
tics in regard to some questions. There 
are many things which we are willing to 
confess lie beyond our present knowledge, 
even, perhaps, beyond our powers of 
knowing. But what of it ? 

The man of science frankly confesses 
that he has no answer to many most im- 
portant questions in regard to the physi- 
cal world. But this does not paralyze his 
effort. His mind is intently fixed upon 
the things which he already knows, and 
upon those which immediately invite him. 
The unanswered or unanswerable ques- 
tions are on the margin of his conscious- 
ness. They can wait. 

Such a wholesome attitude must be 
that of the teacher of religion who adopts 
the same method. He, too, has his un- 
answered questions ; but he, too, has his 
own work, and his work steadies him. 
He is not troubled by the thing which 
u 



Methods of Teaching 

he does not know : he is too much in- 
terested in those discoveries in the spirit- 
ual life which have been made or which 
are immediately before him. 

It is not necessary to " reconcile Science 
and Religion." The attempt to do so im- 
plies that one has a complete mastery of 
both. But one question after another, as 
it comes within the sphere of our real in- 
terests, may be treated with a scientific de- 
sire for truth, and with a desire to get 
from it its religious values. As we go on 
in this way, we find that they need no 
reconciliation, but are seen to belong to 
one great order. 

In like manner the practical problems 
of the church are simplified when we ap- 
proach them from the standpoint of the 
enlightened teacher. We hear complaints 
of the indiflFerence of various classes in the 
community to religion. We hear com- 
plaints of the young people, of business 
men, of workingmen, and the rest. It 
is taken for granted that the need is for 
15 



The Understanding Heart . 

some sensational methods by which they 
may be startled into attention. 

But is not the problem really an educa- 
tional one? Here are great subjects in 
which many persons, we say, are not in- 
terested. 

Why should they be interested in 
them ? We are not surprised to learn 
that the average workingman is not in- 
terested in the latest discoveries in Baby- 
lonia or in the higher mathematics. They 
are remote from his affairs. 

But he is interested in his own welfare, 
the welfare of his family and of his neigh- 
bors. He is capable of being profoundly 
stirred by a struggle through which he 
may be freed from unjust conditions. He 
has his ideals and his hopes. Here is a 
vital system of interests : the problem of 
the teacher of religion is to connect these 
with still larger and more vital interests. 
The man already has a sense of justice. 
Let the just thing he already recognizes be 
the means of gaining larger and still larger 

i6 



Methods of Teaching 

views. He already loves something and 
admires something. Here is the begin- 
ning of all true worship. Let it grow 
from more to more. 

The changes that are taking place in all 
the relations of life demand a kind of re- 
ligious education that shall fit men to 
recognize the spiritual possibilities of the 
new world. They must be able to deal 
with the complex as well as with the 
simple forms of goodness. The revo- 
lutionary forces must be used as well as 
those which are conservative, if any great 
thing is to be accomplished. 

Mr. Benjamin Kidd, in his book 
on "Western Civilization/' has a phrase 
which is illuminating. He says that the 
permanency of any power in the Western 
world is dependent on the degree of its 
"projected efficiency." In a finished 
civilization it might be enough to deal 
wisely with what had already been accom- 
plished ; but in a progressive civilization 
the important factor is not the past, but 
17 



The Understanding Heart 

the immediate future. The ability to see 
what is impending, or even, when we can- 
not see, to grapple with it instinctively, 
is that which insures survival. The vital 
question is not, How correctly have we 
interpreted the past ? but. How far have 
we projected ourselves into the future ? 

This is the task of the trained intelli- 
gence. It is prepared to make those suc- 
cessive readjustments which are necessary. 

Christianity has more than once been 
threatened with extinction, and it has sur- 
vived through its power of adaptation. At 
the time when the Roman civilization per- 
ished, it seemed that the Christian faith 
must fall with it. It was saved through 
the projected efficiency of certain mission- 
aries who, in the forests of the north, were 
laboring with the future masters of the 
world. The Roman legions could not 
prevent the progress of the hosts of bar- 
barians ; but the barbarians themselves 
were converted. 

We need an education that shall teach 

i8 



Methods of Teaching 

us to deal "justly, skilfully, and magnan- 
imously," not only with the powers that 
be, but also with the powers that are to 
be. We must meet them more than half- 
way. 

Who are to be the rulers of America in 
the next generation ? Where are they 
living ? What are they thinking ? What 
are their dreams ? The new multitudes 
pouring into our land, the struggle of 
workingmen, the changed conditions of 
social life, — all these are central to the 
teacher of religion. 

There is the call for more thoughtful- 
ness ; but it is not to be an academic ex- 
ercise, but a serious grappling with living 
issues. The result will be not a sys- 
tematic body of divinity, but a clearer and 
more inspiring outlook upon the actual 
world. 

" Large elements in order brought, 

And tracts of calm from tempests made, 
And world-wide fluctuations swayed 
In vassal tides that follow thought." 
19 



II 

The Sense of Values 



THE SENSE OF VALUES 

One great difference between the mod- 
ern school and the ordinary church lies 
in the temper with which questions of fact 
are approached. The teacher may be 
insufficiently prepared, but at least he is 
not afraid of his subject. He does not 
suspect it of any sinister designs against 
his peace of mind. There it is : his only 
business is to try to understand it. 

On the other hand, one is conscious on 
entering the church of a certain attitude 
of suspicion. The fact may be danger- 
ous : it may lead to unwelcome conclu- 
sions. Serious examination is discouraged 
as being only " destructive criticism." 

The cause of this attitude is not far 

to seek. The teacher of religion finds 

himself in an ambiguous position because 

he has also allowed himself to be placed 

23 



The Understanding Heart 

in the position of the advocate of a creed. 
He is to preserve the faith which was 
"once delivered to the saints." He feels 
that the sanctities of the past are in his 
keeping, and thinks, " beyond this sentry, 
beat the crystal walls in danger." A cer- 
tain intellectual timidity is the inevitable 
result of this false attitude. 

The first necessity in a sound religious 
training is such a discipline as will release 
the mind from all such timidity and teach 
a noble freedom. One must overcome 
the morbid fear of error if he would en- 
gage in a manly search for truth. 

To do this, we must free ourselves from 
the superstition that in the great days of 
the past there were forces at work which 
are now exhausted. If that were so, then 
the problem of religion would be simply 
that of the preservation of a limited treas- 
ure. We are freed when we realize that 
there is more where these good things 
came from. 

A timid piety sees the things which 
24 



The Sense of Values 

have already been accomplished, the re- 
sults of the experiments of the past. It 
fears to lose them in some new experi- 
ment. It advises a parsimony of effort. 
The lessons it draws from experience are 
prudential. It is wise only in avoiding 
mistakes. It says: "Here is a place 
where God may be found. Here is a 
well-trodden path along which the saints 
have walked. As for the rest of the 
world, it is full of pitfalls : we know not 
whether it be God's world or not." 
There is here the courage of established 
convictions, but not the finer courage of 
fresh conviction. 

Now behind that advice there is a lack 
of faith, and a false philosophy. A man 
sees the good that is already, here and 
there, produced through human effort. 
He believes in the result ; but he has not 
learned, as yet, that larger faith in the 
ceaseless effort which has produced that 
result, and he has not yet learned that 
deep confidence that finds in this universe 
25 



The Understanding Heart 

an inexhaustible supply of spiritual power. 
It is true that there is not a single religion 
that has not some truth in it, not one but 
has said to soul-weary men, " Ye must be 
born again," not one but has in some way 
quickened the soul, in some way given 
access to the infinite. That is true, if in- 
deed there be an infinite world ; that is 
true, if indeed there be a God behind all 
we see. We cannot help but touch Him. 
We cannot help finding Him in some 
way when we earnestly seek. That justi- 
fies the struggle of the past, but it also 
justifies the new struggle of the present. 
It justifies the man who is willing to make 
his life a sublime adventure, the man who 
is willing to take a step that to his knowl- 
edge, at least, has never been taken before. 
He also is in God's world. He also shall 
find something, even though it be not al- 
together that which he has dreamed of at 
the beginning. 

The world goes on not because there is 
an exact correspondence between a certain 
26 



The Sense of Values 

definite body of good and a definite num- 
ber of those who seek for good, because 
every aim is reached, because every life 
puts forth its strength wisely and pru- 
dently : the world goes on because the 
seeds of life are everywhere sown broad- 
cast, because out of multitudes of failures 
here and there is a supreme achievement. 
" Thou canst not know which will perish, 
this or that." What each one of us can 
know is, that the world goes on, our lives 
go on, because in human hearts there is an 
infinitude answering to the infinitude that 
is without us, — the infinitude of courage, 
of love, of desire. The one thing which 
we ask for in each new generation is not 
wisdom, but the courage and strength out 
of which alone wisdom comes. 

Among the gulches of our Western 
mountains one may still see the placer 
miner at his work in his wasteful, crude 
way, extracting the gold from the gravel 
of the streams ; and all day long he stands 
by the sluice, shovelling in the gravel and 
27 



The Understanding Heart 

seeing it washed away by the water. All 
day he is engaged in that apparently use- 
less work, not selecting, but laboring on 
stolidly, continuously. Only after the 
day's work, perhaps after several days' 
work, does he see what he has done. 
Then he examines the riffles over which 
the water and the gravel have been flow- 
ing, and then he finds a few grains of gold 
which reward his labor, selected not by 
his own personal care, but by that very 
force to which he intrusts it. 

That is the only way any man can 
work, working with a certain carelessness 
of effort, but working on because he in- 
trusts what he does to some great con- 
stant power which is all the time selecting 
the thing that is good and finding in that 
good something permanent, while the 
rest goes for naught. A man has not yet 
learned to live in the world who has not 
learned to trust some such selective power, 
to look on without regret while much 
that for the moment seemed of worth 
28 



The Sense of Values 

becomes a thing of naught and is for- 
gotten. Then, when the day's work is 
over, that which is worth preserving is 
preserved. He trusts himself to the 
eternal power with which he works. And 
it is altogether false and misleading when 
yesterday's sifted gold is compared with 
the gravel of to-day, yesterday's achieve- 
ment with the imperfectness of to-day's 
effort. 

The only thing, after all, that we learn 
from experience, the only thing that we 
can hand down at last to those who 
come after, is the sense of value. We 
can tell them that, after all, it is only the 
gold that makes the labor worth while, 
that it is only the excellent thing that is 
permanent, and we can make them seek 
that excellent thing and find their satisfac- 
tion in it. This sense of values, intellect- 
ual and spiritual, which we acquire, comes 
from the working of laws that are beyond 
our will. We speak of certain events 
which are memorable, that stand out for- 
29 



The Understanding Heart 

ever in human history and, indeed, make 
all the history that we remember. They 
were not necessarily the things most strik- 
ing at the time, — these things that are 
ynemorable. We forget the sordidness, 
the futility, the absurdities of the time, 
the little men who in their own genera- 
tion passed for great. These men pass 
into oblivion. They did nothing which 
the next generation can remember. Here 
and there names abide, becoming more 
great, looming in more heroic proportions 
as the ages pass. They are the men 
whom the world cannot forget, — cannot 
forget because they are linked eternally 
with great ideals and aspirations. They 
become a very part of the heritage of 
mankind, not because some past day was 
holier than this or some other age really 
braver than this, but only because the 
brave men and brave deeds are remem- 
bered, and the time-servers are forgotten. 
We say that it takes time for causes and 
tendencies to become clear, so that we 
30 



The Sense of Values 

can see the great moral principle behind 
them, that we in our day are confused, we 
have no clear compelling motive, no call for 
manliness and for sacrifices. Was there 
ever a time when it was not so? Was 
there ever a time when common men were 
not tempted to think that gain is godli- 
ness, ever a time when the pettiness of 
the day did not tend to hide the clear 
shining of eternal truth ? But at all times 
there were some who did thus stand true, 
loyal to their own ideals. There were al- 
ways some who chose the unpopular cause 
because it seemed to them true. And 
then the days pass, the transitory things 
fade away, and these causes and these 
souls that had been in " the way everlast- 
ing " stand out clear and strong as wisdom 
is justified of her children. 

If we could but see this simple law of 
nature, if we could but believe in that 
eternal justice through which that which 
is real abides and that which is the nature 
of pretence vanishes, our lives would be 
31 



The Understanding Heart 

simplified. Then should we look at the 
new question not as something that dis- 
turbs the old order, but as a part of that 
order. Always the souls that have sought 
God have found him according to the meas- 
ure of their seeking. Always through the 
earnest desire has come such achievement 
as the world has known. The question of 
old and new, of the tried and the untried, 
does not enter in. Every loyal obedience 
to the inner call of duty, every attempt 
at speaking bravely the thing that is 
within one's own heart, every attempt to 
utter kindness and good will, brings us into 
connection with the whole history of the 
upward movement of the world. So have 
good men and women been doing from 
the beginning, and all our heritage is but 
the result of their effort. If to us there 
comes the need of meeting a new situa- 
tion, speaking in the new accent, making 
for the time a new emphasis, we are simply 
following out that universal law through 
which the world grows more and more, 
32 



The Sense of Values 

though men die and fail. A new com- 
mandment speaks to us. When we obey 
it, we find that it is the old commandment 
which we have heard from the beginning. 
One who thus faces life has no fear of 
putting forth to the full all the power that 
is in him. The great mistake of the 
world has never come through too much 
effort, through too great ideals. The 
world takes care of itself The world 
cannot be moved by mere wilfulness ; and 
that which belongs to our wilfulness, to 
our mistakes, we may leave to that kindly 
oblivion which covers all such things in 
the end. These are the things which are 
to come to naught and all the love of 
truth, of the sincere desire, all the gener- 
ous ardor mingled with them, — all these 
things remain because they are of God. 



33 



Ill 

Symbols 



SYiMBOLS 

In both the school and the church a 
great part of the teaching is by use of 
symbols. The real subjects are too vast 
and complex to be directly presented, so 
that representative forms are used instead. 
The real earth cannot be brought into 
the school-room, but its shape can be 
shown by the little globe. The " object- 
lesson " is indispensable. 

In like manner the great truths of relig- 
ion are so involved in the whole of human 
life that they cannot, in their entirety, be 
brought within the limits of the church. 
Only certain aspects of them can be ex- 
hibited, and that through some symbolical 
representation. Symbolism is not an in- 
vention of priests : it is rather an educa- 
tional device. It has a psychological jus- 
tification. Thought and feeling must be 

37 



The Understanding Heart 

helped by concrete examples, and the 
example must lend itself to the teacher's 
purpose. The form and the spirit must 
be united if a permanent impression is to 
be made. 

When one for the first time goes into 
a Catholic church at high mass, he may 
be readily excused if he looks upon the 
whole ceremony as mere mummery. 
The unknown language, the phrases re- 
peated again and again and as though 
they had some magic efficacy, the genu- 
flections of the priest and the people, 
seem meaningless to one who has been 
accustomed to a simpler form of worship. 
Yet, though these ceremonies may be 
meaningless to the unprepared spectator, 
it does not follow that they are mean- 
ingless to those accustomed to them. 
To the worshipper there these are not 
dead, empty forms. They are full of 
spiritual passion. The worshipper seems 
to stand before the central scene in the 
world's history. 

38 



Symbols 

He stands again looking at the scene 
on Calvary, he sees the " Lamb of God " 
still " taking away the sins of the world/' 
To call all this mummery is only a con- 
fession of our own ignorance and lack of 
imagination. It indicates the same state 
of mind that would make one call a for- 
eign language mere jargon. Before we 
criticise the thing, we must try to under- 
stand it. Because we find no meaning 
in it, there is no reason that we should 
say that there is no meaning there. 

Now, when we see an elaborate ritual 
like this, we perceive clearly that all these 
actions and words are symbolic. The 
words and scenes are nothing in them- 
selves, they do not profess to be anything 
in themselves ; but they stand for and 
represent something which is believed to 
be true. Here is a kind of language 
which is supposed to be understood by 
the people : the church is here speaking 
to her children in parables. Through the 
gate-ways of the senses and the imagina- 
39 



The Understanding Heart 

tion, she is seeking to enter their inmost 
souls. These outward things are not the 
grace which is beyond price : they are only 
the means of grace, — not the fountains of 
religion, but the well worn channels of re- 
ligious emotion. And so the church 
makes use of every possible means for 
bringing its thought and its holy passion 
to bear upon the heart and upon the con- 
science. Architecture, music, motion, 
speech, color, are used in turn and are sub- 
ordinated to one purpose, which is to 
arouse and direct thought and feeling in 
regard to religion. 

Now a true criticism of any such elab- 
orate religion is the same that may be used 
in regard to language. The first essential 
of language is not that it should be rich 
or beautiful, though it may be both : the 
first essential is that it should have a 
meaning, and that it should actually con- 
vey that meaning. And so one asks, Do 
people actually understand these acts and 
symbols? And the candid priest would 
40 



Symbols 

be very willing to acknowledge that as a 
matter of fact a great many people do not 
understand them. He may admit that 
there are in his congregation those who 
look upon these signs, not as symbols at 
all, but as the ultimate reality. They see 
and hear, and after a fashion enjoy, the 
sights and sounds, but they go no farther. 
These forms are not transparent to their 
thought. They stand to them with a 
certain opaque virtue of their own. The 
place is holy, the image is the object of 
worship. All these things that the 
church has provided with such profusion 
are accepted as realities and enjoyed and 
reverenced as such. They are not to 
these persons the " shadow and copy of 
heavenly things," full of holy suggestions 
of something beyond : they are the holy 
things themselves. And yet the priest 
might say that this is not his fault or the 
fault of the service, but that the fault is 
with those who are so dull of understand- 
ing that they cannot interpret the symbol 
into reality. 

41 



The Understanding Heart 

Many people do not understand para- 
bles, or poetry, or any symbolic state- 
ment of truth ; but the man of logic who 
thinks he has a statement so crystal clear 
that it contains the truth and nothing but 
the truth cannot glory, because the priest 
may very well ask him, " Do all the peo- 
ple understand what you mean when you 
speak through the colorless understand- 
ing, do they as a matter of fact get the 
holy passion for righteousness and for 
truth which is yours ? " 

Shakespeare makes his curate and 
schoolmaster discourse together, and 
Goodman Dull stands by and listens. 
After a while they say to Goodman Dull, 
" Thou hast spoken no word all this 
while," and Goodman Dull answers after 
his kind, " No, nor understood none 
neither, sir." 

Goodman Dull may not understand 

poetry, forms, the sense of any priestly 

ritual ; but Goodman Dull is not a ready 

pupil in logic, either. He must in any 

42 



Symbols 

event be taught "line upon line, precept 
upon precept." 

Now, when we have this elaborate 
ritual, we see that there are two things, — 
the symbol and the great reality which 
is behind it. A symbol is nothing of 
itself, but it is the means of communi- 
cating something of true value. Every 
religion, no matter how simple, no mat- 
ter how natural, must be in its methods 
largely ritualistic. Because it deals with 
that which is infinite and eternal, it can- 
not dispense with some outward forms by 
which these things are made known. It 
must be propagated not by means of exact 
definitions, not by showing the things 
themselves, but only by suggesting them. 
Every religion must use these symbols, 
whether elaborate or simple, to suggest 
something behind ; and the most simple 
and rational religion is most in danger of 
degenerating into formalism, because it is 
then so easy to mistake the form for the 
reality. 

43 



The Understanding Heart 

The Quaker is more apt to be a formal- 
ist than the priest, because he does not 
readily see that his simple actions or mere 
silence are not in themselves worth any- 
thing, but are only suggestions of some- 
thing which the soul may reach through 
them. Let us take the most spiritual and 
inward views of religion, let us say once 
for all that it is not a thing of formality, 
but of life and of the interior apprehension, 
it is the direct sense of the infinite and the 
eternal in the individual soul, its joy and 
peace and hope. When you have felt 
any of these things in your own heart, 
the desire comes to communicate them to 
others. Something very wonderful has 
happened to you, life has become alto- 
gether different, a great hope has dawned, 
a mighty emotion has come to you : you 
stand in the presence of infinite reality 
which demands the allegiance of your 
heart and life. And it is then when 
something has happened to you which 
transcends your knowledge that you be- 

44 



Symbols 

come conscious of the loneliness of every 
individual soul, the great gulf that sepa- 
rates you from others. Then you begin 
to ask yourself, Has this holy secret been 
revealed to me alone, has another felt just 
this which thrills me? Has this hope 
dawned upon another soul and this love 
taken possession of it? How can you 
know ? 

It is only when some one, by use of 
some form, communicates with you that 
you can know whether your deepest life is 
something that separates you from others 
or unites you in a common fellowship. 
We are all upon the great deep : every life 
is a ship sailing upon its own predestined 
course, but across the great deep we can 
signal to each other. The whole history 
of religion in its outward manifestation is 
this. It is the attempt of individual souls 
to communicate with each other across the 
gulf of life, telling of the discoveries they 
have made, signalling across great centuries 
and lands until they learn at last that the 

45 



The Understanding Heart 

heart of the world is one in its needs and 
its hopes. 

Now, as the ship-master, when he sees 
the signals from afar, must compare 
those signals with his own code, so 
every one of us who sees the signs 
must interpret them as best we may, 
through our own personal experience, 
until we come to see that as we feel 
to-day others have felt. And we find, 
when these signals come, that we must 
take the common things of life as the 
basis, we must use them as sugges- 
tions of the higher things. So nature 
comes to be all symbolic to the religious 
consciousness. 

The mountain thus becomes to every 
idealist something more than a heap of 
earth and stone : it becomes " the great 
affirmer of the present tense and type 
of permanence." 

And the sea with its restlessness is 
something more than the water which is 
in it, for there are tides of the spirit which 
46 



Symbols 

respond in us to the movement of the 
sea. It becomes truly to every one of us 
looking upon it typical of those hopes 
which make our life, and the mystery 
of it. 

When one across the centuries is tell- 
ing us of the thought that came to him 
as he looked out upon the universe, — 
" Thy righteousness is like a great moun- 
tain. Thy judgments like a great sea, — " 
we need no scholar to interpret the words. 
Wp also have felt the presence of the 
same mystery. And the light that comes 
to us is not merely a physical thing any 
longer: it thrills us with messages of 
hope. We know what the man meant 
who said of God, " God is light ; " the 
words interpret these signals that flash 
round the world. 

To the lover of light, darkness is some- 
thing more than a physical fact. Why is 
it to-day that the philanthropist looks 
upon the dark cell of the prison as in 
itself a torture too great to be inflicted ? 

47 



The Understanding Heart 

Because only that soul which is illumined 
from within, which finds some spiritual 
light, dares face continually the darkness. 
To the sinful soul the darkness stands as 
the withdrawal of all hope. No man 
thus facing his own life can have those 
symbols always before him without de- 
spair. The light and the darkness, day 
and night, — these stand for experiences 
of the inner life. 

We must teach by symbols. This we 
must all acknowledge. A form of 
thought or a form of words is just as 
truly symbolic as is a gesture or a statue. 
But the educational question is : Do these 
symbols actually lift the soul to the 
contemplation of the truth symbolized? 
Does the parable illuminate any other- 
wise dark tract of experience ? 

George Eliot tells of the clergyman 
who, in an elaborate discourse on the 
parable of the leaven, was successful in 
getting the hearers' minds into the dough- 
tub, but was unable to get them out. 
48 



Symbols 

Such is the result of all unskilful efforts 
at religious teaching. 

Here the church may learn a lesson 
from the school. The object-lesson is in 
the school-room used as a means to an 
end, it never allowed to become an end 
in itself. It gives only one aspect of the 
reality : the teacher aims to draw the mind 
away from it to the thing for which it 
stands. When this is once clearly under- 
stood and practised in the church, there 
will be no further quarrel with symbolism. 
Let the teacher of religion have his mind 
centred on a reality, then all his chosen 
symbols will become transparent. 



49 



IV 

Literature and Morals 



LITERATURE AND MORALS 

" What books shall we put into the 
hands of our children ? " This question 
is asked with a tremulous anxiety by those 
who have moral and spiritual interests at 
heart. 

A list of the best books, from the stand- 
point of the lover of literature, only adds 
to the anxiety ; for it happens that these 
books have not all been written with the 
purpose of edification. Literary culture 
is something different from " the nurture 
and admonition of the Lord." 

It has been characteristic of evangelical 
piety that it has been distrustful of the 
world's great literature, and has attempted 
to create a literature of its own. The 
drama, the novel, the poetry which ex- 
pressed the feelings of the natural man ; 
all these were classed among the temp- 
53 



The Understanding Heart 

tations. The youth in a sheltered home 
was given " safe " books to read. If fic- 
tion was allowed, it was of a kind so 
much less strange than truth that it did 
not stimulate the imagination. In these 
tales the heroes suffered for a time, but al- 
ways according to an intelligible plan and 
for the sake of an obvious moral . They had 
their temptations, but they were not of a 
kind to tempt the reader. If there was 
the slightest danger of misapprehension, 
the good author would intervene, like Snug, 
the joiner, to give assurance that no harm 
was meant. The path of duty was well 
supplied with guide-boards and policemen. 
The distinctions between virtue and vice 
were never left unexplained. The sinner 
was never allowed to deviate for an in- 
stant into rectitude, nor to endear him- 
self by any lapses into virtue inconsistent 
with his main character. He was intro- 
duced only to illustrate the "exceeding 
sinfulness of sin." The hypocrite could 
be detected at a glance : the wolves wore 

54 



^ Literature and Morals 

their sheep's clothing so awkwardly that 
not even the most inexperienced lamb could 
be deceived. One did not think of the 
characters as changing from day to day 
under stress of circumstance, becoming 
now weaker, now stronger. A great gulf 
divided the good from the bad. The bad 
were predestinated by the author from the 
beginning unto wrath. This decree of 
literary reprobation was as unyielding as 
that described by the Westminster di- 
vines : " Some men and angels are predes- 
tinated and foreordained unto everlasting 
death. These men and angels, thus pre- 
destinated and foreordained, are particu- 
larly and unchangeably designed, and 
their number is so certain and definite 
that it cannot be either increased or di- 
minished." 

Not only works of pious fiction have 
been written in this way, but histories 
have been written, not primarily to satisfy 
the desire to trace the course of events, 
but to illustrate a thesis. They show not 

55 



The Understanding Heart 

so much what happened as what, in the 
writer's opinion, ought to have happened. 
We are shown how the wicked are caught 
in their own devices, and how the right- 
eous inherit the earth. The retribution 
on evil deeds is pictured as so direct that 
one wonders how evil has managed to 
survive. An agreeable feature in such 
histories, and one which saves the reader 
from perplexity, is that the righteous al- 
ways belong to the same sect and fight 
under the same banner. There is none 
of the difficulty presented in the parable, 
where the wheat and the tares grow up to- 
gether and are often indistinguishable ; for 
they are shown to belong to different fields 
and to be always divided by a sufficient 
fence. 

There have been systems of philosophy 
in which only what is presumed to be 
"safe" has been allowed place. It is an 
expurgated edition of the universe that is 
presented, adapted for the use of parish 
schools. These neat systems seem de- 
56 



Literature and Morals 

signed to disprove the saying that "a 
little knowledge is a dangerous thing"; 
the amount of knowledge of the real 
world contained in them being so very 
little that it could scarcely be dangerous 
to the weakest intelligence. No facts are 
admitted that do not fit snugly into the 
edifying system. Nature has no teeth or 
claws. There are no ugly facts, no un- 
tamed passions, no unanswered questions, 
no tantalizing possibilities, no vast dim 
regions yet unexplored. The universe 
presented is just the kind of a universe 
which a well-regulated but somewhat 
commonplace intelligence would have 
created. The most that can be said 
against it is that it is a little dull. - 

It is a critical moment when one dis- 
covers that this is not the real universe, 
which is something not nearly so safe, and 
a great deal bigger. The real universe is 
so big that it is easy to get lost in it ; 
and all of us do get lost in it, and 
the wisest only dimly see the way. And 

57 



The Understanding Heart 

we learn that human nature is much 
more complex than we had been taught, 
and character and circumstance are not 
adjusted with that mechanical exactitude 
which the moral tale describes. Real 
people are neither so good nor so bad 
as the people in an allegory. 

When we turn from the books that are 
written for edification to the real literature 
of life, we enter a new world. The great 
poets, philosophers, historians, dramatists, 
novelists, are not special pleaders for any 
single type of character, nor do they set 
up any one standard of respectability. 
They try to understand the truth and to 
sympathetically express it. Through the 
exercise of reason and imagination, they 
desire to give a representation of many- 
sided realities. 

The historian who conscientiously at- 
tempts to trace the actual course of events 
finds that the channel which the stream 
has made for itself is less straight than 
that which the moralist had traced for it. 
58 



Literature and Morals 

There are many devious windings and 
many surprises to the explorer. There 
are many great events whose moral bear- 
ings are not obvious. There is a seamy 
side to the lives of the saints. There 
are great men, to whom the world is in- 
debted, whose characters do not match 
their deeds. Many a good cause has 
triumphed by questionable means. In 
like manner the philosopher finds many 
facts that sadly mar the symmetry of his 
system. He must confess that they are 
true, and yet he doesn't know just what 
to do with them. 

The great dramatists and novelists im- 
itate the wide impartiality of nature. The 
sun of genius shines alike on the just and 
the unjust. All varieties of character, all 
circumstances, all passions and struggles, 
are sympathetically studied, with the desire 
to find out the truth in regard to them. 
There are no labels to the characters, no 
predetermined plan by which rewards and 
punishments are meted out. The people 

59 



The Understanding Heart 

live their lives, working out each one 
his own destiny. They act from mixed 
motives and from imperfect knowledge. 
They are subject to accidents which mar 
the smooth administration of poetical jus- 
tice. The author does not apologize be- 
cause his picture does not always seem 
edifying : it is sufficient if it enlarges our 
conception of reality. 

Men of intense moral earnestness have 
always found it hard to appreciate this 
point of view. It is a part of the old 
conflict between the Puritan and the hu- 
manist. The Puritan was intent on the 
discipline of conscience and the purifica- 
tion of the spiritual nature. The human- 
ist sought the enlargement of experience 
and the increase of sensibility. The Puri- 
tan sought to reform the world, the hu- 
manist to understand it and appreciate it. 

But is there not a generous culture that 
unites these two ideals and seeks to culti- 
vate them in harmony ? Should not our 
effort be to such an end ? This was the 
60 



Literature and Morals 

ideal realized by Milton in the seventeenth 
century and by Channing in the nine- 
teenth. 

Milton's conception of virtue was in- 
clusive of wide sympathy and generous 
human aspiration : — 

" Mortals that would follow me, 
Love Virtue : she alone is free, 
She can teach you how to climb 
Higher than the sphery chime, 
Or, if Virtue feeble were. 
Heaven itself would stoop to her." 

Conceive of religion and morality not 
as conventionalities to be preserved, but 
as mighty forces exhibited in the living 
world, and we come to see in all great 
literature an inspiration. 

There are clever persons who tell us 
that the great writers are unmoral. Mo- 
rality is treated by them as a provincial- 
ism that may be ignored by the man of 
cosmopolitan breadth. It is a prejudice 

6i 



The Understanding Heart 

of commonplace minds. It is, in their 
judgment, the highest praise of a work of 
art that it has no moral quality. 

Now, if this were so, if the greatest 
works of human genius were unmoral, 
and if it were the necessary effect of intel- 
lectual culture to produce indifference to 
right and wrong, I should, I confess, go 
with the Puritan. We can get along, 
he says, without great art or literature, 
but we cannot get along without honest 
and earnest men and women. We can 
get along without taste or scholarship : 
we cannot get along without character. 
We can get along without very extensive 
knowledge of the great world ; but so 
much of the world as we live in and con- 
trol we must make clean and habitable. 
Some one has described the man of un- 
moral culture, with his half-sceptical inter- 
est in social problems, as "a Sadducee 
asking his way to Utopia.*' Rather than 
such a man, give me the Puritan ideal of 
the pilgrim " clothed with rags, standing 
62 



Literature and Morals 

with his face from his own house, a book 
in his hand and a great burden on his 
back, and crying, What shall I do to be 
saved ? " Cardinal Newman was right 
when he declared, — 

" Dim is the philosophic flame, 
By thoughts severe unfed ; 
Book-lore ne'er served when trial came, 
Nor gifts when faith is dead." 

But in what sense are the great works 
of human genius, those works which give 
the largest and freest representations of 
reality, unmoral ? If you mean that the 
first intention of their authors is not to 
point a moral, or if you mean that they 
pay little attention to the conventional 
standards of respectability, and that they 
are not afraid to shock the prejudices of 
many good people, all this may be readily 
granted. But if you mean that a com- 
plete and truthful representation of hu- 
man life can be given which ignores 
63 



The Understanding Heart 

moral powers and moral relations, I say, 
no. 

The great facts of sin, of righteousness, 
and of judgment, cannot be suppressed. 
Those who eliminate them from their pict- 
ure only indicate their own limitations, 
and condemn their work to hopeless triv- 
iality. He who without moral insight 
attempts to tell the story of an individual 
or a nation, is like a painter who is color- 
blind. It is not as if the moral were 
tacked on to the story ; it is involved in 
the story itself, it is the centre of its inter- 
est. How men sin, and suffer from their 
sins, and at last, through sorrow and pain, 
find the way of life, — what greater theme 
is there than this ? One might say that 
this is the only theme, and that literature 
furnishes only variations upon it. Did 
we live in a perfect world, in which no 
mistakes were possible, and no struggles 
were required, there would be nothing to 
tell. This monotony of excellence would 
furnish no material for history. And, on 
64 



Literature and Morals 

the other hand, were there no ideal of 
perfection, nothing to rebuke us in our 
lowness and to lure us on to an excellence 
yet unattained, there would be nothing 
worth telling. It is because we are im- 
perfect creatures, capable of worshipping 
the perfect and striving for it, that life be- 
comes thrilling in its significance. How, 
under all varieties of circumstances, souls 
are awakened to their true condition, how 
they make mistakes, how they learn wis- 
dom from their errors, how they sorrow 
and love and aspire, how danger evokes 
heroism, and disappointment hope, — of all 
this we never tire. Shakespeare describes 
this perennial theme of literary art, — 

" O benefit of ill ! now I find true 
That better is by evil still made better; 
And ruined love, when it is built anew, 
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far 
greater." 

The " benefit of ill " is essentially a moral 

theme ; it is a discovery of the moral in- 

65 



The Understanding Heart 

sight ; it involves the triumph of the soul 
over unfavorable circumstances. 

The term " unmoral " may properly be 
applied to clever rather than to great liter- 
ature. A short story may be written from 
which all ethical elements are left out. 
In such a story we are shown an act with- 
out its consequences. A person commits 
a pleasant sin, and we see its pleasantness 
and not its sinfulness. There is an im- 
pression of delightful irresponsibility. But 
this impression comes, not because we 
have an artistic representation of the truth, 
but because the whole truth has not been 
told. Poets have written beautiftil songs 
in praise of wine, and have described the 
exhilaration and gladness that belong to 
certain stages of intoxication. But no 
poet could describe it all, so as to make 
it seem attractive. Vice ceases to be at- 
tractive when it is seen in all its results 
and relations. Those who have attempted 
great things, who have tried to portray 
life in its wholeness, have found it impos- 
66 



Literature and Morals 

sible to ignore the moral element. If it 
does not appear directly, it manifests it- 
self powerfully by suggestion. In the 
real world every act has its consequence, 
and it is the business of the student of 
humanity to trace the consequences. The 
judgment on the evil deed may not be 
so obvious as in the moral tale ; but it is 
a real judgment, coming through the 
working of natural law. This is what 
gives significance to the great tragedies. 
We trace in them both physical and moral 
causation, but the great interest is always 
in the latter element. What matter if 
the hero is borne down by overwhelming 
physical force ? If he is faithful unto 
death, and in death is heroic, we hail him 
as conqueror. 

Nor is great literature unmoral because 
it introduces us to other than what we 
call respectable people. If that were so, 
the New Testament would be lacking in 
morality, because of its sympathetic treat- 
ment of harlots and publicans and sinners. 
67 



The Understanding Heart 

This means only a more truly discrim- 
inating moral judgment. The line be- 
tween right and wrong does not run be- 
tween different classes in the community. 
"The word of God is living and active, 
and sharper than any two-edged sword, 
and piercing even to the dividing asunder 
of the soul and the spirit, of both joints 
and marrow, and quick to discern the 
thoughts and intents of the heart." 

The judgment of those who are quick 
to discern the thoughts and intents of the 
heart will be different from that of those 
who judge by some conventional standard. 
They will point out the weaknesses and 
selfishness in many whom the world praises, 
and they will find much to love among 
people who are despised and blamed. 
This means that they have discovered 
that the moral struggle is not all in one 
place, and going on only under certain 
circumstances. The battlefield is the 
world, and the battle is along the whole 
line. Wherever a man sees a better and 
68 



Literature and Morals 

a worse, and chooses the worse, there is 
sin and wretchedness. Wherever a man 
chooses the better part, there is a triumph 
for righteousness. To truly observe and 
rightly record the varying phases of this 
great human struggle requires, not the 
spirit of a narrow partisan, but the broad- 
est sympathy and the quickest apprehen- 
sion. 

Nor is the philosophic attitude toward 
the world unmoral, though it often seems 
so to the impatient moralist. Broad tol- 
erance and impartial acceptance of facts 
gives the impression of ethical indiffer- 
ence. But in reality this is but the con- 
dition of true moral judgment. No more 
impressive words are found in the Bible 
than those which describe the impartial 
eyes of God without anger, but with full 
comprehension of the actual and the pos- 
sible, viewing the evil and the good in 
human character. " The eyes of the 
Lord are in every place, beholding the 
evil and the good." That seems to me 
69 



The Understanding Heart 

more impressive than any description of 
a general judgment. We live our lives, 
we do our deeds, we achieve our measure 
of success. But all the time there is an 
intelligence that sees us as we are. In 
the light of this intelligence our good, 
however imperfect in its expression, is 
seen to be good, our evil, however dis- 
guised, is seen to be evil. And is not 
this what the human intelligence, when it 
has grown large and clear and calm, be- 
comes ? The ideal philosopher — not the 
system-maker, but the man of serene wis- 
dom — does not wilfully shut his eyes to 
any reality. His eyes are in every place : 
he seeks to comprehend, and is not quick 
to blame. But, when he sees the evil 
and the good, they are not alike to him. 
The same clear-sightedness which discerns 
a character must also discern its quality 
and its value. 

Between a narrow morality and a self- 
ish culture there must be conflict. But 
there is a morality that is not nar- 
70 



Literature and Morals 

row, and a culture that is not selfish. To 
know the real world, to feel the sweep of 
its great forces, to enjoy its amazing vari- 
ety, is not to have escaped from the 
realm of moral law. It is only to have 
prepared one's self for its understanding. 
The education which fits us to perceive 
the actual world must also fit us to do 
our proper part in it. 



71 



V 

Work and Worship 



WORK AND WORSHIP 

In the discussions which we so often 
hear in regard to the future of religion, 
there is one thought which is continually 
repeated and which brings to many minds 
great apprehension. It is that religion is 
in danger from the increasing preoccupa- 
tion of the minds of the people. It may 
be disputed whether the rich are growing 
richer and the poor growing poorer, but 
it is certainly true that the busy are grow- 
ing busier and the idle are more preoccu- 
pied by the pleasures of idleness. The 
modern man finds so much to do. There 
are so many directions in which his mind 
may move, so much work, so much pos- 
sibility of pleasure to be crowded into the 
few years of his life, that there are those 
who say it is possible that through this 
very expansion of human activity religion 

75 



The Understanding Heart 

may be crowded out. Even as it is to- 
day, they say, it is too much to expect 
that the men who are building our cities 
and our railroads, who are discovering 
the laws of the universe, who are troubled 
with the problems of government, who 
have charge #f vast business affairs, 
should have time for the peculiar prob- 
lems of religion. Men are becoming too 
busy to be religious. 

Now I think that the very fact that such 
an idea ever enters into the minds of men 
is an indication that our ordinary idea of 
what religion is is an inadequate one. 
What would you say of an officer in the 
army who should declare : "I am too busy 
to indulge in patriotic feeling or to re- 
spond to that. I am too much occupied 
with many affairs that demand my whole 
attention. I have to see that my men 
are well drilled and well fed ; I have to 
go upon the march, I have to be pre- 
pared for battle. I am too busy to in- 
dulge in any transcendental sentiment." 
76 



Work and Worship 

What would you say to that man ? You 
would say : " You mistake altogether the 
meaning of patriotism. It is not another 
kind of business that you are to perform 
after you are through with this necessary 
work of your profession. It is simply 
that which gives your profession any value 
whatever. Without this sentiment your 
business is the vilest that can be con- 
ceived. You are a mere mercenary en- 
gaged in the trade of butchery. There is 
a sentiment which justifies you, however, 
which lifts your profession from the low- 
est to the highest ; and that is the love of 
the country, unselfish devotion to the flag 
you serve. It isn't a question of time, it 
isn't a question of preoccupation : it is a 
question of right feeling." 

Lovers of peace often make the mis- 
take of underrating the idea of military 
honor, and of speaking slightingly of the 
soldier's profession. As a matter of fact, 
we have to speak in a diff^erent tone if we 
are to preserve our own liberty. No 

77 



The Understanding Heart 

man is worthy to hold the sword save as 
he is inspired by the very highest motives. 
And all that inspires military honor, — the 
religious sentiment, if you will, of the 
military life, — all that is a necessary part 
of that life, without which it has no value 
whatever, or is worse than that, — is a 
menace to the public weal. 

What would you say to the man of 
business who said to you : " I have to do a 
great many things, I have to make plans 
for this business of mine, I have to see 
that my obligations are met, that the work 
given me to do is done correctly. I have 
a great many things to look after. I have 
so much to do that I have no time to 
consider my duty, no time to consider 
questions of ethics. I am a practical man 
of affairs *' ? What would you say to the 
wife and mother who declared ; " My 
household demands all my care. I 
am occupied with the welfare of my 
children and my husband. I have no 
time to indulge in what you call love. 
78 



Work and Worship 

That is an affair altogether apart from the 
necessary work of my life, I am too 
much preoccupied for that " ? 

Now in a thoroughly wholesome and 
natural state, religion bears just that rela- 
tion to life. It is not something which is 
an affair by itself, something that can be 
considered in any abstract way, but some- 
thing which gives the very highest value 
to every activity. A man should not 
think of religion as if it were another 
thing from that which he is all the time 
doing. 

Suppose you had gone to a grave citi- 
zen of the Roman Republic and asked 
him about his religion. I fancy that such 
a man would hardly know what you 
meant. He would not approach it as we 
in these days are apt to approach a relig- 
ious question. " Have you time for re- 
ligion ? *' you would ask that man, the 
man who bore the burdens of state, who 
was the counsellor, the legislator, the sol- 
dier of the Republic. He would say 

79 



The Understanding Heart 

that he had military offices to perform and 
he had to summon a certain kind of 
strength within himself that enabled him 
to perform those duties. He needed for- 
titude, and because of that he sacrificed at 
the altar of Fortitude. He went to the 
war, and he came back with his trophies to 
the temple of Victory. Victory was not 
to him a merely human achievement: it 
was won through co-operation with the 
heavenly powers. He had to live, to 
fight, to legislate, to administer govern- 
ment. Each act of this Roman citizen 
was accompanied by a certain religious 
sentiment which lifted it into dignity. 
That was what gave glory and meaning 
to his life. One of the highest officers of 
his religion and of the state he called the 
pontifex, the bridge-builder. The title 
carried his mind back to the time when 
to build a bridge across the Tiber was a 
sacred act. The bridge-builder was a 
sacred officer. Except the bridge were 
built truly, except it were built in accord- 
80 



Work and Worship 

ance with the highest laws, they labored 
in vain that built it. All these men were 
religious men, with religious functions 
and possibilities. Could a man be a loyal 
citizen of the Republic without sharing 
in the supreme ideals of the Republic? 
How could a man expect the laws to be 
observed save as in some way he felt the 
law itself to be sacred ? To be a profane 
man was to be a traitor. So the Roman 
talked of piety not as something that was 
apart from family life and from duty to 
the state. A man of piety was the man 
who loved father and mother and rever- 
enced the laws that came through them as 
well as one who had the same sentiments 
towards the gods who were unseen. 

In the modern world we have largely 
lost this thought of the religious signifi- 
cance of the whole life. We are accus- 
tomed to the distinction between the sec- 
ular and the ecclesiastical. Religion has 
been made a profession, and treated as if 
it might have an independent life of its 

8i 



The Understanding Heart 

own. The confusion has become greater 
because secular methods have been contin- 
ually improving while ecclesiastical meth- 
ods have been less subject to change. 

One of the first men to see that what 
is needed is not merely a theological re- 
construction, but a new outlook upon 
human life, was William Ellery Channing. 
He saw clearly that religion must be in- 
terpreted not by ecclesiastics, but by broad- 
minded men of the world. It must claim 
for its own the whole field of human 
activity. 

Speaking at the dedication of the Cam- 
bridge Divinity School, he protested 
against that " piety that, like the upas-tree, 
makes a desert where it grows." He 
lamented that ministers have so fallen be- 
hind their age that they are often the 
most determined foes to progress. " The 
young man who cannot conceive of 
higher effects of the ministry than he now 
beholds, who thinks that Christianity has 
spent all its energies in producing the 



Work and Worship 

mediocrity of virtue that at present char- 
acterizes Christendom, has no call to the 
ministry." " Why is the future ministry 
to be a servile imitation of the past ? If 
we live in a new era, must not religion be 
exhibited in new aspects and in new re- 
lations ? '' Channing touched upon the 
real weakness of our modern religion 
when he said : " Religion has been made 
a separate business, and a dull, unsocial, 
melancholy business, too, instead of being 
manifested as a truth that touches every- 
thing human, as a universal spirit which 
ought to breathe through and modify all 
our desires and activities, all our trains 
of thought and emotion. • . . Instead of 
regarding it as a heavenly institution, de- 
signed to perfect our whole nature, to 
offer awakening and purifying objects to 
the intellect, imagination, and heart, to 
develop every capacity of devout and 
generous feeling, to form a rich, various, 
generous virtue, divines have cramped 
and tortured the gospel into various sys- 
83 



The Understanding Heart 

terns, composed in the main of theologi- 
cal riddles and contradictions." 

We have only begun to think of relig- 
ion as the development, here in this world, 
of a " rich, various, and generous virtue." 
We have been accustomed to think of 
it as only one kind of virtue to be ap- 
proached only in one way, as if men of 
one profession had the monopoly of God. 
The real religion which is adequate for 
modern life can never be developed by 
churchmen alone : it cannot exist save 
as we get large numbers of people to- 
gether and make each person feel that he 
himself is making a religion ; that he is 
bringing to the church and to the world 
that which the church and the world need, 
— his individual insight into truth, his 
ideal of perfection, his moral and spiritual 
enthusiasm. We have to come back to 
just that kind of feeling which made the 
Roman bridge-builder a sacred person. 

Now that is a great deal to do. We 
have only begun to think that it is worth 
84 



Work and Worship 

doing or that it is possible. When we 
come to feel the sacred significance of 
life, we shall answer the question whether 
it is possible that men may be too busy 
and too much burdened to be religious. 
Then we shall see that the more work a 
man has to do, the more power he must 
have behind him. And we shall see that 
something more than physical strength is 
needed. We must use spiritual powers to 
enable us to do our simple duty. At the 
very highest, the life of a true man of 
business becomes the expression of religion. 
At the very highest, the real poet cannot 
be anything but religious. At the very 
highest, the statesman feels himself to be 
an instrument in the hands of God. The 
philosopher sees that he is only thinking 
God's thoughts after him. How rich, 
how various, how wonderful are these ex- 
periences ! And the time has come for 
us to recognize that these form the very 
essence of religion. 

Suppose one were to preach on Sunday 
85 



The Understanding Heart 

with sufficient power to make every one 
go forth for the next week and do some- 
thing which the preacher conceives to be 
the one service of God. I can imagine 
that possible. " We will forsake our secu- 
lar, every-day business," you say, "and 
give ourselves for a whole week to what 
this man says is God's business." How 
much poorer the community would be, 
how much poorer this nation would be 
for that, because one man could tell so 
much less of what his neighbors could do 
than each one could discover for him- 
self. Suppose, on the other hand, each 
person were to go forth to his own busi- 
ness, to his own appointed and chosen 
work, and should say, " For this one 
week I will take this business of mine as 
if it were a sacred office, as if God himself 
commanded me to do this, and to do it 
the very highest way possible for me." 
How much richer the world and the com- 
munity would be for these various virtues^ 
these gladder activities everywhere mani- 
fested ! 

86 



Work and Worship 

There is a point where every man's 
life seems dull, sordid, and selfish. 
There is a way of doing his work which 
leaves him cold toward the world and 
toward the higher power. But just as the 
temperature of the soul rises, a change 
comes, and that which once seemed bare 
and mean and selfish seems to be one of 
the phases of the divine activity. That 
is what religion is meant to do, — to lift 
out of its selfishness, its sordidness, and 
its commonplaceness any work which any 
human being is called upon to do. 

Suppose a young man were to give 
himself to a life of letters ; were to say : 
" I am going to make poetry. It is very 
hard work. I must give my whole time 
to it" ; and then he were to read the lines 
of Shelley : — 

" The breath whose might I have invoked in 

song 
Descends on me ; my spirit's bark is driven 
Far from the shore, far from the trembling 

throng 

87 



The Understanding Heart 

Whose sails were never to the tempest given. 
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ! 
I am borne darkly, fearfully afar ; 
Whilst burning through the inmost veil of 

heaven 
The soul of Adonais like a star 
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal 

are. 

The would-be man of letters says: 
" That is something which I have never 
felt, — a breath that comes upon me with 
inspirations from above, some influence 
bearing me afar from the things of sense. 
That sounds very much like religion. I 
have no time for that. I am making 
poetry. I must be at work.*' Do you 
not see that that man has shut himself oS 
from the highest possibility of his own 
chosen art ? Only when he receives some 
kind of inspiration can the finest work 
be done, and that inspiration cannot be 
described save in terms of religion. 

Suppose a man gives himself to some 
science, or to some strenuous profession, 

88 



Work and Worship 

and then reads this description of the 
mind in which intellectual integrity has 
risen to the point of religious fervor: "In 
the glorious company of the heroes a 
high rank belongs to him who, superior 
to frowns and sneers, and in opposition to 
warping influence of private friendship or 
personal ambition, keeps his mind chaste, 
inviolate, a sacred temple for truth, ever 
open to new light from heaven ; and who, 
faithful to his deliberate convictions, 
speaks simply and firmly what his uncor- 
rupted mind believes." Every word here 
is a word of religion, every symbol is a 
religious symbol. The ambitious man 
says : " I haven't time to indulge in that 
sort of thing. I want to accumulate facts. 
I want to write books. I want to make 
theories. I want to pass judgment on 
the affairs of state. I have a thousand 
things to do and I haven't time for senti- 
ment. " 

Well, if you haven't time for that, you 
cannot do what vou aspire to do. If 
89 



The Understanding Heart 

your mind is only a workshop and you 
are only a workman, if there is no sacred 
place kept inviolate from passion, from 
prejudice, from self-interest, then all your 
judgments are warped and biassed. We 
cannot trust such a man as a Judge 
upon the bench. We should not trust 
such a man to give judgment in affairs 
where great interests were concerned, which 
involve the life of nations, because he has 
not yet that inviolate mind sacred to truth. 
There must be a sacred place somewhere. 
There must be something corresponding 
to worship. There must be ideal aspira- 
tions somewhere, and, when you come to 
such ideals, you come to the attitude of 
religion. 

We go about our daily work doing the 
thing we have to do and doing it as well 
as we can ; then we come together with 
common faith, common aspiration, with 
recognition of the underlying meaning of 
it all, hoping that upon us the breath 
divine may come, so that all the drudgery 
90 



Work and Worship 

may be transformed into worship, faith, 
and joy. We are builders, building the 
institutions of society, building our indi- 
vidual homes and our individual business. 
And, as we build, we realize that we may 
not indulge in whims of our own ; that 
there are certain great laws of the universe 
that must be obeyed, and these are spirit- 
ual laws. These laws involve righteous- 
ness. When we build in defiance of them, 
our structures fall of their own weight. 
Except the Lord be with us, except we 
are with Him, we labor in vain. We 
cannot draw a line of division between our 
work and our worship ; but we must real- 
ize that our work is not done well unless 
the spirit of worship has been in it all. 

The need of religion to the man of af- 
fairs is greater than it ever was before ; 
for there are certain aspects of his work 
that terrify him. Primitive tools, which 
the man could use, have given place to 
elaborate machinery. Shall the man use 
the machinery for his own purpose, to 
91 



The Understanding Heart 

nurture his real life, to aid in his own de- 
velopment, or shall the machine gain the 
mastery and crush him ? Everywhere the 
machine is setting the pace. 

When Coleridge and Wordsworth were 
walking through Scotland, they came upon 
a steam-engine. Wordsworth said that 
it seemed to him like a living creature. 
" Yes," said Coleridge, " it is a giant with 
one idea." 

That is the terrible thing about a ma- 
chine-made civilization. The machine is 
great and strong, it is marvellous in its 
capacity for work ; but no machine, how- 
ever intricate, can express more than one 
idea. The idea may be a narrow one 
and fatal to human happiness ; but what 
of it ? The machine moves on, incapa- 
ble of pity or remorse. The improved 
cotton-mill will turn out more cotton 
cloth, the railway with heavier rails and 
larger locomotives will transport more 
goods at a lower cost, the printing-press 
will turn out more newspapers and books. 
92 



Work and Worship 

All this is progress. But what of hap- 
piness and justice, what of love and peace ? 
There is no machinery by which these 
things are manufactured. 

In an age when the giant with one idea 
threatens to become the master, a spiritual 
religion appears as a new chivalry. In 
transforming work into worship, it elevates 
the man above all the machinery he has 
invented. 



93 



VI 

The Higher Intelligence 



THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCE 

One great source of confusion in relig- 
ious education arises out of our exaggera- 
tion of the distinction between intellectual 
and moral development. We delight in 
emphasizing the contrast between good- 
ness and wisdom. We treat them as 
if they belonged to unrelated spheres. 
When we praise a man for one set of 
qualities, we often imply disparagement in 
regard to the others. The good man, 
we say, is loving, tender-hearted, sympa- 
thetic, just. The wise man seeks reality. 
He is keen, inquisitive, sceptical. He 
seeks to know the thing as it is. In our 
ordinary thought we place the two charac- 
ters in opposition. 

The wise man, we say, is not necessa- 
rily or often good, the good man not 
often wise. When we have any very 

97 



The Understanding Heart 

important business which requires intel- 
lectual acuteness, we are not satisfied to 
go to one who is commended to us as " a 
good, faithful souL" We take it for 
granted that his moral qualities are 
praised because nothing can be said of 
his intellectual qualifications. 

This antithesis with certain minds be- 
comes more pronounced. The essence 
of what we call pessimism lies in this, — 
that goodness and wisdom are conceived 
not only as different things, but as in 
their nature irreconcilable. They belong 
to two different compartments, and so 
long as they are kept apart all is well. 
When they are brought together, and the 
wise man seeks to be good and the good 
man seeks to be wise, then there is disas- 
ter. The pessimist is a pessimist because 
on the one side he has a sensitive con- 
science, and on the other an acute intelli- 
gence. It is in the attempt to bring these 
two things together that he comes to re- 
bellion against the actual world. 
98 



The Higher Intelligence 

This was the sting in the words of the 
Fury in Shelley's "Prometheus Un- 
bound " : — 

" The good want power, but to weep barren 

tears, 
The powerful goodness want ; worse need for 

them. 
The wise want love, and those who love want 

wisdom; 
And all best things are thus confused to ill." 

If to be wise is to come to the under- 
standing of an altogether unmoral uni- 
verse, then for the wise to attempt also 
to be good must result only in hopeless 
misery. According to this view the 
young man beginning his career may 
choose between the two ideals. He may 
say, I choose goodness. Very well, shut 
your eyes to facts. Be not too inquisi- 
tive to explore the dark places of this 
world. Close your ears to many of the 
voices that come to you. Walk in one 
narrow path with bowed head, as did the 

LofC. '^ 



The Understanding Heart 

saints of old. Mortify not only body, 
but mind as well. Go on, and you shall 
go, step by step, up your Calvary, that 
Mount of Sorrow that belongs to all who 
would be over-much righteous in an in- 
different world. Dream your dream, see 
your vision ; may the time never come 
when you shall awake ! The wise man 
looks upon you as he looks upon some 
one under the influence of an opiate ; who 
does not know the truth and whose senses 
are lulled to the hard reality, and who 
"amid the charnels of the dead hears the 
murmur of the fountain-head." A good 
man who dreams his dream of righteous- 
ness, who thinks he was not made to die, 
does not hear the fiend voices that rage 
about him. That is the utmost that a 
man from this standpoint can say to 
those who are trying to live a life of ideal 
rectitude in a world where they say ideal 
rectitude brings only hopeless misery and 
disappointment. 

On the other hand, one may choose 

100 



The Higher Intelligence 

the path of knowledge. To him the ad- 
vice is : Beware of all emotion. The in- 
tell4|t must be kept cool, indifferent to 
the moral struggle. Do not allow any- 
thought of hero-worship to intrude in 
your mind, else you cannot see human 
life as it is. Do not allow yourself to 
be carried away by thought of any final 
causes, of any dramatic movement of the 
world, of any great cloud of witnesses 
looking down upon this little planet of 
ours as upon a wondrous spectacle. See 
the thing as it is, and only as it is. Let 
your intellect expand at the expense of 
your emotions, which are only misleading. 
To know the truth is to stand as one 
indifferent to love and hope and pity. 
So at last do you become wise. When 
you become wise, you become miserable. 
Your life is behind you. Your mind is 
full of sad experiences. At last you are 
so wise that you are ready to accept the 
fact that there is no reasonable outcome 
whatever, no adequate explanation for all 

lOI 



The Understanding Heart 

this struggle of humanity. The good 
man, simple-hearted, dull of perception, 
strong of faith, let him go his way and 
dream his dream. The wise man, brave 
but hopeless, let him gather for himself 
the experience which only brings to him 
the greater despair. 

Now that is the result whenever we 
carry out, logically, the idea that good- 
ness and wisdom are antagonistic princi- 
ples ; that they have nothing to do, the 
one with the other. The only escape that I 
can see is by leaving this antithesis behind 
us as a false and unreal one, and coming 
rather to that which we find in the New 
Testament, between "the wisdom that 
is from above " and that which is from 
below. The contrast here is not be- 
tween a weak goodness and a clear intel- 
ligence ; not even between the moral cult- 
ure and the intellectual culture. It is 
between two kinds of intelligence, — what 
this writer describes as the lower intelli- 
gence, the lower wisdom, and what, on 



The Higher Intelligence 

the other hand, he calls the higher wis- 
dom. The lower wisdom, he says, is 
earthly, sensual ; or, literally, animal. It 
is something that is our earthly inheri- 
tance ; that which links us to the creatures 
below. The other kind of intelligence is 
that which links us to God. 

It is " first pure, then peaceable, easy 
to be entreated, without partiality, with- 
out hypocrisy." 

You will note that he has not here 
treated of what he calls morality, but 
what he calls intellect. This is the kind 
of wisdom that is characteristic of the 
truly developed man. Let us see how 
this is. We do have our line of inheri- 
tance that links us with what is earthly 
and what is animal. The animal intel- 
ligence has one object. It is to sustain 
the anim.al life in its struggle for existence. 
The brain is developed just as the claw 
is developed, that the animal may secure 
its prey. The animal that survives and 
that triumphs is the one that has this 
103 



The Understanding Heart 

intelligence in the largest degree. And 
it is possible to treat a man in this same 
fashion; possible to view the history of 
human civilization from this standpoint, 
— the standpoint of the beast of prey. 
The brain of one man is more finely or- 
ganized than another. The man is crafty, 
subtle, cunning, far-seeing, and all for the 
sake of himself, that he may gain the 
mastery over others. He is developed 
for the same purpose that the tiger is de- 
veloped in all his fearful strength. It is 
possible to trace this line of animal de- 
velopment, step by step, to the stronger 
race. It is possible to show how a certain 
spurious morality can grow out of this im- 
pulse. The wolf must conform to the law 
of the pack. The man must conform to 
the customs of his tribe, not because they 
are just, but only because he thus is made 
stronger to gain his own ends, which are 
substantially the same ends which the tiger 
or the lion had before him, — to get food, 
to destroy, to gratify appetite. 
104 



The Higher Intelligence 

It is possible to carry this a step 
further until it bjecomes a very mockery 
of our highest hopes. There have been 
those who say that religion is but the con- 
summation of this process. The strong 
nations are religious because they find that 
religion helps them in their struggle. 
For one thing, it furnishes them with 
more prey. It makes the weak more 
ready to acquiesce in the tyranny of the 
strong, and so the strong always stand for 
religion, — religion for the other people 
more than themselves. It is the lure 
which draws the weak to their own de- 
struction, and through their destruction to 
the greater power and glory of the few. 

Now, however you refine upon this, 
however you try to throw a veil of sanc- 
tity over it, the stubborn fact remains 
that this process, through and through, 
has had an object which is animal, and not 
human. It is an object which would ap- 
peal to the intelligent tiger, not to the 
spiritual mind of man. When you ad- 



The Understanding Heart 

mire this development into strength that 
is cruel, into power that is pitiless, you 
can only feel your admiration going out 
easily when some one of the animal king- 
dom is the object of it. 

The finest example for us is the eagle, 
the sublime bird of prey, rising to the 
lofty heights, with eyes that pierce to the 
remotest distance, and which are never 
blurred by mist of pity or of wonder ; 
cold, keen eyes that from those heights 
are looking down to a single point, and 
that for a single object. The eagle from 
the height is looking down only for its 
prey, and, when it finds it, then all his 
mighty powers are put forth. 

" He clasps the crag with hooked hands ; 
Close to the sun in lonely lands, 
Ringed with the azure world he stands. 
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls ; 
He watches from the mountain walls. 
And like a thunderbolt he falls." 

That, we say, is sublime. Yes, for the 

1 06 



The Higher Intelligence 

bird of prey, that power exerted uner- 
ringly for a single object; keen, cruel 
eyes, strong, rushing wings, claw and 
beak, all united in one great power, — for 
what ? — that that eagle may devour his 
prey. 

But now turn to human life. Think 
of a man in that way. He is the result of 
ages and ages of growth. Every power 
has been developed in him slowly through 
the generations. At last one man rises 
above his fellows into the clearer air. His 
is the wider view. His eyes are keen. 
He sees afar. His strength is well knit. 
Then he looks down and sees some help- 
less creature; and with all his force 
brought together, with one quick swoop 
upon his victim, he descends, like a thun- 
derbolt, to destroy. Is that sublime to 
you? Oh, that is pitiful ! — beyond all 
imagination, pitiful ! We ask, can it be 
that all this development has been only 
for that? That this man may grow 
strong, and because he is strong, obeying 
107 



The Understanding Heart 

the impulse of a narrow will, use his 
strength for himself alone ? Is the eye 
of man but the eagle eye, piercing and 
pitiless, searching out its prey, or was it 
meant for the open window through which 
the majesty and sublimity of the universe 
might enter? Was the brain of man in- 
tended only to make cunning plans for 
selfish ends ? 

" Not for this 
Was common clay ta'en from the common 

earth. 
Moulded by God, and tempered with the tears 

of angels 
To the perfect shape of man." 

Not only when we look upon such a 
man do we feel such a revulsion, but the 
man himself, when he has grown in self- 
ish strength and has put forth all his 
power, shrinks appalled from his own 
success. Never has there been such des- 
pair as among men who have gained all 
that they selfishly desired. Mr. Howells 
io8 



The Higher Intelligence 

has pictured such despair, — the utter dis- 
comfiture of the selfishly successful man : 

" If He could doubt on His triumphant cross, 
How much may I, in the defeat and loss 
Of seeing all my selfish dreams fulfilled. 
Of having lived the life I willed, 
Of being all that I desired to be, 
My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken 
me ? " 

A man forsaken when he has reached 
the very summit of his desire, — is he the 
wise man ? Nay, does he not stand as a 
fool, self-convicted before the face of God 
and man ? This line of selfish and sensual 
development leads to the time when the 
man stands refined, cultivated, strong, but 
with only the selfish, brutal impulse back 
of it all. This wisdom is earthly, animal, 
devilish, because as the fruition of it all 
we have before us at last only " a glorious 
devil, large of heart and brain/' 

It is when the man stands shuddering 
at the sight of his own success that he 
109 



The Understanding Heart 

asks, Is there not another kind of wis- 
dom, another development of all our facul- 
ties ; an end worthy of our power? And 
the answer is that there is such a wisdom. 
It is not the wisdom of the strong brute, 
cunning and insistent ; it is not the wis- 
dom of the narrow-minded savage, sly 
and crafty : it is the wisdom of the son of 
God, who recognizes God's will, and 
stands ready to do it. That is what his 
mind is for. To be freely and fully de- 
veloped, not to be childishly secluded, 
but to do the proper work of a man. 

I think we must come back again to 
something of the old Greek love of wis- 
dom, as Socrates understood it ; the old 
Hebrew love of wisdom, as we have it in 
the books of their sages ; something of 
this New Testament idea of wisdom, with 
its development of all human faculties in 
grace as well as in strength. It is not a 
mere instrument to be used, it is a revela- 
tion of the higher purposes of existence. 
The man stands where he sees the end of 



The Higher Intelligence 

his life. His intelligence enables him to 
discover the beauty and wonder of the 
world ; to understand something of its 
laws which lie below, and which control 
all human action ; to learn the principles 
by which to govern himself and to de- 
velop himself. He knows that his mind 
was given him in order that he may learn 
to sympathize with other minds ; to enter 
into their temptations and to share in 
their triumphs. He knows that he is 
here, not merely that he himself may eat 
and drink and get gain, but that the gen- 
erations that are to come may live saner 
and happier lives. He sees the need of 
the development of will, but not the will 
that is obstinate, but the will that is gentle 
and easy to be entreated, — the good-will 
which brings peace on earth. It is not all 
to him a sombre world. There is room 
in it for laughter, for humor, for wit, but 
no place for scorn. There is need in 
this world for humility. When he has 
learned all he can learn, when he has 
III 



The Understanding Heart 

developed himself to his highest, he rec- 
ognizes most clearly his own Hmitations. 
He stands reverently, wisely, before the 
mystery of being, not despairing, but be- 
lieving, facing courageously that which is 
before him. 

To understand this world, with its sor- 
rows, with its life, with its struggles, with 
its temptation, with its ultimate triumph, 
— this, and not to satisfy the animal pas- 
sions, is wisdom ; and out of this wis- 
dom, which comes when heart and brain 
are united in search for the divine ele- 
ment, comes the justification of our lives. 

To such a man conscience does not 
stand on one side and reason on the 
other. It has been the glory of his life 
that from the beginning they have been 
united in one sweet reasonableness. Out 
of the lower intelligence comes perpetual 
strife. As men rise into the higher intel- 
ligence, co-operation in all good works 
is possible ; " and the fruit of righteous- 
ness is sown in peace, of them that make 
peace." 

112 



VII 
Moral Discipline 



MORAL DISCIPLINE 

How far is it really possible for any one 
to prepare for the great crises of life? 
We go on day after day in an uneventful 
way, with commonplace duties and sim- 
ple enjoyments, and then suddenly there 
comes a time when the whole order of our 
life is overthrown. Some emergency 
arises demanding unusual power. The 
daily routine is broken up, and we are 
called upon to make some great choice, 
something which is to determine all our 
future life. We are called upon to bear 
some heavy responsibility, to answer some 
hard question, to endure a great loss. 

Now is it possible for one, by taking 
thought, by any kind of discipline or 
foreknowledge, to prepare himself for 
such a time ? In one sense I think it is 
not possible. If you mean to ask whether 
"5 



The Understanding Heart 

we are able, by looking forward, to really 
answer the questions of to-morrow, to 
know exactly what ought to be done in 
some unfamiliar crisis, or to give some 
distinct response to a question which has 
not yet become urgent to us, I think we 
must answer that it is not possible. That 
which makes the crisis is the element of 
surprise. So it is in every hour of great 
temptation. When a person is called 
upon suddenly, he discovers a weakness 
which had been unsuspected. Jesus 
stated the experience of mankind when he 
said, "If the man of the house knew at 
what watch in the night the thief was 
coming, then he would have watched, and 
not suffered his house to be broken 
through.'* But we do not know, we 
cannot know. In the great emergencies 
we find ourselves taken by surprise. 

And in a different way this is true of 
those things which we know are inevitable. 
We know that they are coming some time, 
but the time and the occasion are in 

ii6 



Moral Discipline 

doubt. We are astonished that that 
should happen to-day which we had put 
off to a vague to-morrow. It is not easy 
for one generation to transmit its dearly 
bought wisdom to another. The father 
tries to teach his son the lessons which he 
himself has learned through sad experi- 
ence ; but he is speaking in an unknown 
tongue. The son hears, but he does not 
understand. How can he ? Each genera- 
tion has to face the same old questions as 
if they were altogether new. 

Now because all this is true, because at 
unexpected times the great crises come 
to us and find us not ready for them (in 
many respects surprised at their appear- 
ance), there are those who draw the con- 
clusion that there is no real preparation 
of soul possible. " All things come alike 
to all,'' the author of Ecclesiastes said 
sorrowfully. There are some things 
which we have to meet and to bear, some 
lessons which we have to learn. We get 
through the hard lessons some way. We 
117 



The Understanding Heart 

endure because we have to endure. There 
is no escape for us. Why not, then, take 
each day as it comes, not asking ourselves 
very much about the future, not seeking 
very earnestly any preparation ? 

The answer lies, I think, in this : that, 
while there can be no preparation for the 
future, in the sense of clear foreknowledge 
and accurate adjustment to a specific 
situation, there is another kind of prepara- 
tion which is possible, — a preparation not 
for the single event, but for every event 
that comes, — a preparation that goes far 
deeper into our nature than any single 
experience. 

That which happens to us in the moral 
and spiritual life is just that which hap- 
pens to every educated young man. The 
young man leaves college, having spent 
years in discipline, and he expects to find 
some immediate use for that discipline. 
He imagines that he is prepared for 
the distinct work that he has to do. 
Scarcely a month has passed before he is 

ii8 



Moral Discipline 

thrown almost into despair. Theory is 
so different from practice. Questions 
which he had been asked and had an- 
swered in the school are put in such unex- 
pected forms in real life. All the circum- 
stances are so strange to him that he says 
to himself, " Here is a problem that has 
not been solved by my preparation in 
college, and all that work is therefore a 
failure." 

Is it a failure ? The very way in which 
that young man faces his life shows that 
it has not failed. His education indeed 
may not have answered the specific ques- 
tions of practical business life ; it may not 
have solved any problem that is now 
presented. But he has been taught to 
face everything that comes to him as a 
problem^ not as something to be left as 
vague as he finds it, but as something to 
be analyzed, to be studied, to be under- 
stood. All these years he has been doing 
just that thing. One problem after 
another has come to him that has at first 
119 



The Understanding Heart 

puzzled him ; and there has come the 
habit of concentrating his thought upon 
the problem of the day. 

When he recovers himself, he faces his 
new life in that way. Here are practical 
problems, just as before there had been 
theoretical problems, and he faces these 
things with intelligent courage. And after 
a little he finds that he has been prepared 
for the successful life, with the preparation 
of the whole mind, and most of all 
through the habit of bringing to bear his 
intelligence upon the matter in hand. 
The trained soldier may find himself in 
an unusual position with foes strongly 
entrenched, with scarcely an idea as to 
how the battle is to be won. But, just 
because he is a trained soldier, he has 
learned some things, — that he must go 
forward, that he must face the difficulty 
instead of fleeing from it, that his business 
is to obey orders, and, " having done all, 
to stand." An army, however unsuccess- 
ful it is, is just because of its discipline 
superior to any mob. 



Moral Discipline 

In every free government we have 
crises which come from time to time, 
questions for which there can be no 
immediate solution ; parties are ranged 
against each other, issues are joined; there 
is no willingness on either side to com- 
promise. And yet in a nation that has a 
past, that has been disciplined in the 
fundamental ideas of freedom and of law, 
people meet these crises without dismay 
because they know that there are some 
fundamental principles common to all 
parties, that there is a limit to party strife. 
When this limit is reached, the minority 
in some way must yield. The majority 
must rule according to the ideas and the 
principles of the nation's constitution. 
That in itself is a triumph : it is a tribute 
to the work of preparation for freedom 
which has gone on. 

Is it not in this way that we see the 
real purpose of moral and spiritual disci- 
pline? It is not that the disciplined soul 
can answer at once the difficult questions 

121 



The Understanding Heart 

that come ; that the man whose whole 
life has been given to the service of God 
does not sometimes stand at a point where 
all is dark, where for the moment he does 
not see God, or truth, or the way of 
righteousness. Again and again he ex- 
claims, " Out of the depths do I cry unto 
thee." You read the lives of the greatest 
believers, and from time to time you hear 
outcries of a soul in pain. This is the 
burden of the old Psalms : they were 
written by men who were lonely and 
heart-sick, bereaved and despondent. 
And yet that despondency is not utter 
despair. We know that there is abiding 
confidence and peace. We know that, 
when the man says, " I cannot see, I do 
not know, I look now upon one side 
and now upon the other, and I do not 
see God,'' he yet believes in God. He 
has learned to believe in the God who is 
not seen, and in the peace which passeth 
all knowledge. 

We sometimes misinterpret that beauti- 

122 



Moral Discipline 

ful text which tells us that " as our hour, 
so shall our strength be/' as if when the 
crisis comes, calling for a great faith or a 
great virtue, the crisis itself creates the 
power by which it is to be met. I think 
we do not find that ever to be the case. 
When the crisis comes, it calls out what- 
ever heroism may have already existed, 
just as when a great danger to a nation 
comes it calls out the great man if the 
great man be actually there. The great 
man may have been unknown before, liv- 
ing in some quiet way, unrecognized by 
his neighbors, but then the call comes, 
and the man is ready. That doesn't mean 
that he has suddenly become great. The 
real savior of the nation is usually the 
man who was unknown till the nation 
called, but he had always had just the 
qualities which he showed in the time of 
danger. And we find that these qualities 
are common qualities. He is "rich in 
saving common sense, and, as the greatest 
only are, in his simplicity sublime." He 
123 



The Understanding Heart 

is a man who always has been " to true 
occasion true." There have been little 
occasions that have called him heretofore : 
now the great occasion calls, and he is 
true to that, — that is all. To face death, 
to overcome a temptation that tries the 
temper of the soul, to do in some hour 
of trial the thing that ought to be done, 
all this requires a training in every-day 
faithfulness. 

Wordsworth described poetry as " emo- 
tion remembered in tranquillity." Moral 
strength may be defined conversely. It 
is a principle discovered in tranquillity, 
and remembered in time of emotion. 
The great emotion does not of itself 
give insight. There are times when things 
come to us against which we rebel. We 
are ready to " curse God and die " : they 
seem so contradictory to a divine order 
of things. And the questions which we 
ask at such times are many of them ques- 
tions which cannot be answered, for the 
very mood in which we ask prevents the 
124 



Moral Discipline 

true answer. Then it is that we fall back 
upon memory and habit. In the hour 
of trial we resolve simply to be loyal to 
our own best insight, to what we have 
felt and thought in hours of tranquillity. 

Alas for that soul which has had no 
hours of tranquillity, and that in those 
hours has never pondered the solemn 
miracle of life, has never asked : " What 
am I ? What is my place in this uni- 
verse ? How am I to face my own igno- 
rance, my own limitation ? How am I to 
strengthen an immortal hope that shall 
be to me a help in the hour of trouble ? " 
Because, when worst comes to worst, we 
have no help save in our own best. We 
" rally the good in the depths of our- 
selves.'' Every great hope springs from a 
great memory ; every great decision grows 
out of the habits of the soul. Read the 
Twenty-third Psalm. How tranquilly it 
begins : " The Lord is my shepherd, I 
shall not want. He leadeth me in the 
green pastures and beside the still waters." 
125 



The Understanding Heart 

That is the lesson of experience, that is 
the argument for whatever of lofty hope 
and cheer there may be in the darkest 
hour. He has led me by the still waters. 
Then the earnestness of struggle comes. 
The man is no longer by the still waters. 
There is a choice to make, and it is a dif- 
ficult one. Still the same power is there. 
Remembering the still waters, there comes 
the faith that the same power is to help 
in the more difficult way. "He leadeth 
me in the paths of righteousness for his 
name's sake." The man with all that 
experience of the quiet life with God be- 
hind him, and the experience of the dif- 
ficult path of moral choice (God with 
him in the quietness and God with him 
in the struggle), faces at last the greatest 
struggle of all, with its mysterious ques- 
tioning. It is exactly the same power 
that must be here, and the same spirit 
in himself abiding that shall give the com- 
fort. "Yea, though I walk through the 
valley of the shadow of death, I will fear 
126 



Moral Discipline 

no evil : thou art with me." That is 
the way God prepares us for the future, 
that is the way by which strength comes 
when most we need it. 

Nothing is more painful than to try 
to speak to an unprepared soul in a time 
of personal trial. What can one say to 
one who has lived selfishly, measured all 
things by a worldly standard, clung self- 
ishly to friends, to life itself, never learned 
what disinterestedness means, nor the calm 
which comes through the habitual con- 
sciousness of an eternal power? Then, 
when that which the soul clung to is taken 
away, there comes the sudden bitter cry : 
" Why has all this evil come upon me ? 
Why am I singled out for sorrow and 
for loss ? Who shall justify the ways of 
God to me ? " There is no answer, and 
there can be no answer to that mood. 
It is the mood of the spoiled child that 
makes impossible demands. True wis- 
dom is of slow growth. It comes to one 
who from the beginning has faced steadily 
127 



The Understanding Heart 

the actual, and has interpreted it in the 
light of the ideal. He has taken account 
of sorrow and change. He has behind 
him the experience of trial and of victory. 
He began with the religion of the child, 
in quietness and in joy, with uncontra- 
dicted faith, walking with the Eternal, 
then growing steadily in faith and strength 
through the battles won, and at last fac- 
ing the supreme emergency. One who 
has thus lived is prepared for all that 
comes. He says : " Ever as I struggled, 
I found behind me divine power, and to 
that power I trust myself now." Not 
as a surprise, but simply as the fulfilment 
of the whole life, comes that great change 
through which he enters into the more 
intimate presence of God. 



128 



VIII 
On the Study of the Bible 



ON THE STUDY OF THE 
BIBLE 

No revolution in thought is more start- 
ling than that which has taken place in 
regard to the Bible. What is the Bible ? 
The traditional answer, which the founders 
of our great Protestant churches accepted, 
had the advantage of being simple and 
direct. The Westminster Confession, in 
carefully chosen language, declared : " It 
pleased the Lord at sundry times and in 
divers manners, to reveal Himself, and 
to declare His will unto His people, and 
afterward for the better preserving and 
propagating of the truth to commit the 
same wholly unto writing. The whole 
counsel of God concerning all things nec- 
essary for His own glory, man's salva- 
tion, faith and life, is either expressly set 
down in Scripture, or may by good and 
131 



The Understanding Heart 

necessary inference be deduced from Script- 
ure, unto which nothing is at any time 
to be added, either by new revelations of 
the Spirit or by traditions of men/' 

According to this theory the Bible is 
a book altogether free from error, written 
by God himself, through the agency of 
certain favored saints. It is no wonder 
that, so long as this opinion was received 
without question, the Bible was the most 
interesting book in the world. Those 
textual discussions which to us seem so 
dry were once full of most intense life. 
The study of the universe could not com- 
pare with the study of the Scriptures. 
God indeed had made the universe, but 
it was vast and perplexing, full of con- 
tradictions. The universe was a puzzle ; 
but in the Bible God had given us the 
key to it. Would we get at the essential 
truth concerning our own origin and des- 
tiny, here we might find it written down 
in infallible words. There was no need 
to urge people to search the Scriptures. 
132 



On the Study of the Bible 

Such a mine of rich ore, or rather such 
a treasure-house full of the unalloyed 
gold of truth, it would be the most trans- 
parent folly to neglect. 

But all this has been changed. The 
Bible stood against the attack of its ene- 
mies ; but the theory of its infallibility 
has been undermined through the patient 
investigations of its friends. No pious 
sophistry can conceal the plain fact that 
a book in which unmistakable errors 
have been discovered cannot be infallible. 
Marks of human limitation appear every- 
where. The theory of a book miracu- 
lously perfect in all its parts breaks down. 
The present tendency of the defenders 
of the old doctrine is to assert infallibility 
only in regard to what cannot be tested. 
The Scriptures, as we now have them, 
we are told, may contain errors, but we 
are bidden to believe that the original 
manuscripts were inerrant. A more ab- 
surd refuge for a discredited dogma could 
scarcely be imagined. 
133 



The Understanding Heart 

But what remains of the Bible when 
the doctrine of its miraculous origin and 
authority is given up ? Many people 
throw it aside altogether. This is natural 
enough. In the church of the Latter 
Day Saints the Book of Mormon is ac- 
cepted as a direct revelation from God, 
and is studied reverently ; but, when one 
comes to disbelieve the story of its origin, 
the book is thrown aside. The reason 
is that it has in itself no value. But is 
this true in regard to the Bible ? 

The verdict of the most competent 
critics is that it is not true. They find 
an intrinsic value, which makes it al- 
together independent of the stamp which 
the Church has put upon it. After all 
deductions have been made, we must admit 
that there is that in these writings which 
still challenges the attention of the world. 

Let us frankly admit the human limita- 
tions. The Bible is a human book and 
had a natural growth. But, unless we 
have a very poor idea of humanity, this 
134 



On the Study of the Bible 

will not make us turn away with con- 
tempt. We may here see the diviner 
side of humanity. We may see it strug- 
gling upward through its ignorance and 
its sin into a purer air. We may hear 
its song of triumph as it catches sight of 
its far-off goal. 

The Bible is the literature of a little 
nation ; but it was a nation with a peculiar 
genius for religion. Within the narrower 
limits of the ancient world the life of a 
nation sometimes turned in one direction, 
and produced masterpieces which later 
ages have not equalled. Many have been 
the advances in knowledge since the 
days of Plato, but our busy, many-sided 
modern life has found no substitute for 
the great works and great thoughts of 
Greece. The fire still burns on the old 
altars, and thither pilgrims go to light 
their torches. Such fire remains also on 
the ancient altars of Israel. 

What may one expect to find in the 
Bible? If he expects a final answer to 
' 135 



The Understanding Heart 

every question, he will be disappointed. 
What he may find is a vivid record of the 
growth of religion, — a record written "at 
sundry times and in divers manners," 
but always with power. It is the story 
of religious development given by eye- 
witnesses of the progress. 

He may find traditions of remote 
antiquity, glimpses of holy men, seen 
through mists, walking with God along 
the far mountain summits of time. Per- 
haps he may hear words of lofty cheer 
from those who had not yet lost " the 
large utterance of the early gods." Trac- 
ing the history, he may learn, not simply 
how individuals, but how nations grow 
into spiritual life and faith ; how from 
crudest nature-worship they grow into the 
thought of God as the " high and lofty 
one who inhabiteth eternity, whose name 
is holy " ; how through ages of patient 
endurance the thought grows tenderer, 
until at last the Eternal, who loves righte- 
ousness, becomes also the Father, who 
136 



On the Study of the Bible 

loves even his most sinful children. Here 
one may watch the growth of ideals of 
human greatness as the procession passes 
down the ages. Nomadic chieftains, wan- 
dering over the deserts and building 
altars by the way ; border warriors lifting 
hands yet red with blood in prayer to 
their tribal God; Oriental despots, pas- 
sionate, vindictive, yet with a not unreal 
halo of sainthood around their heads ; 
wild-eyed hermits, issuing from the fast- 
nesses of the rock and pronouncing the 
doom of princes with a stern " Thus saith 
the Lord " ; preachers of righteousness, 
denouncing alike the evils of temple and 
court and market-place, and declaring a 
God who despised burnt-offerings and 
sought only the contrite heart ; exiles in 
a far country, dreaming of the new king 
and the better country. At last, in the 
fulness of time, through numberless dis- 
appointments, the old ideals of earthly 
glory fade away and the nation comes to 
recognize a new order of excellence, — the 



The Understanding Heart 

excellency of a manhood clothed with 
humility and crowned with suffering, as 
Israel finds its highest ideal in "a man 
of sorrows and acquainted with grief." 

Here one may meet with almost every 
phase of individual experience. Israel had 
no genius for abstract philosophy. There 
was no Academy in Jerusalem, no Plato, 
no Aristotle. But for life-philosophy, 
the results wrought out by the personal 
struggles of men left alone with their own 
sorrows and seeking a way out of them, 
I know not where we can find a parallel 
to these Scriptures. " No man without 
trials and temptations," said Luther, *^ can 
attain to a true understanding of the 
Holy Scriptures." It needs not so much 
critical scholarship as personal experience, 
to interpret these tragedies of the soul. 

We talk of the simplicity of the Greek 
drama, with its few actors and its relentless 
unfolding of destiny. But simpler still 
is the Hebrew drama. In Job we see the 
stricken sufferer and his would-be com- 
138 



On the Study of the Bible 

forters facing the unsolved problem of 
sorrow, with only the passionless calm of 
the desert for a background, until from 
the whirlwind comes the voice of the 
Eternal rebuking alike the wild repining 
of the sufferer and the cold consolations 
of his friends. 

In the book of Ecclesiastes we may 
study the workings of the mind of an 
Oriental sceptic. He doubts whether life 
is good ; he has no faith in immortality, 
nor in human wisdom, nor in any lasting 
success. But in the storm of doubt his 
soul is held by one anchor, his conviction 
that there is a God. He is a deist, and 
his conviction, though too colorless to 
greatly cheer him, at least keeps him from 
absolute despair. " Let us not be over- 
much wise,'' he says, " nor over-much 
righteous " ; but, after all, there is a God, 
and it is better to keep his command- 
ments. 

How like a step into the sunlight it is 
to come out of the dark, close room, 
139 



The Understanding Heart 

where the world-weary philosopher sits 
brooding, into the temple courts where 
we hear the sweet assurance of the Psalms, 
or into the market-places where the lis- 
teners are thrilled by the generous ardor 
of the prophets ! Here, indeed, are words 
brimming over with eternal life. Nations 
come and go, but the songs sung on the 
Judean hills, centuries before the Caesars, 
have not lost their power to make melody 
in the heart. They never grow obsolete, 
these 

" Swallow flights of song that dip 
Their wings in tears, and skim away." 

Nor, while there are rulers who refuse to 
do justice, and there are rich men who 
grind the faces of the poor, and the 
multitude prefers private gain to the pub- 
lic good, will the prophets become obso- 
lete. Still we hear them crying as of old 
against false princes and false priests and 
false people : " Thou art a land that is 
not cleansed ; her priests have violated 
140 



On the Study of the Bible 

my law and profaned my holy things; 
her princes in the midst of her are like 
wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, 
and to destroy souls, and to get dishonest 
gain. The people of the land have used 
oppression, and exercised robbery, and 
vexed the poor and needy ; yea, they 
have oppressed the stranger wrongfully." 
When all goes well, and we are at ease 
in our little Zions, these writings seem 
enigmatical, but in times of moral awak- 
ening men instinctively turn to them and 
understand them. So Jesus at the begin- 
ning of his ministry turned to the prophet 
who wrote of the glad tidings to the poor. 
So in the midst of Roman persecution a 
half-frenzied Christian heard over the new 
Babylon of the West the prophetic doom 
upon an unrighteous civilization, and cried 
exultingly : ^^ Babylon is fallen ! is fallen ! " 
So to the prophets Chrysostom turned 
when he would rebuke the corruption of 
the Eastern Empire ; and Savonarola when 
he would bring fickle Florence to repent- 
141 



The Understanding Heart 

ance ; and the old words came unsought 
to Theodore Parker as he saw the lava 
torrent of wrath, uncooled by the ages, 
rolling down upon all oppressors. 

Were the prophecies fulfilled? Yes> 
a thousand times. As often as the justice 
of the universe is vindicated and the 
refuges of lies swept away, as often as 
a new word of cheer comes to the poor, 
so often it can be said, " This day is this 
scripture fulfilled in your ears." In the 
new experience the old words live again, 
and we realize 

'' From what agonies of heart and brain, 
What exultations trampling on despair, 
What tenderness, what tears, what hate of 
wrong," 

they came. 

Such are the Scriptures, the records of 
a gifted race in its search after God, a 
literature whose central thoughts are right- 
eousness and worship. We cannot neglect 
them without loss to ourselves. The 
142 



On the Study of the Bible 

Bible must take its place as a part of the 
world's literature, but we may be sure 
that it will be a high place. No serious 
criticism has affected the estimate of its 
intrinsic value. The flippant jests of 
those who treat it with scorn have influ- 
ence only with those who are ignorant of 
its real history. 

Was the Bible inspired ? Our answer 
must depend on what is meant by inspira- 
tion. One who believes that every good 
gift is from above, and that the unfolding 
of intelligence is itself a revelation, is not 
averse to the idea of inspiration which the 
author of the Wisdom of Solomon gives : 
"I myself am a mortal man like to all. 
... I called upon God and the spirit of 
Wisdom came to me. I loved her above 
strength and beauty. . . . For Wisdom 
is more moving than any motion. She 
is the breath of the power of God, a 
pure influence from the glory of the 
Almighty. She is the brightness of the 
everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of 
143 



The Understanding Heart 

the power of God and the image of his 
goodness. She maketh all things new, 
and in all ages, entering into holy souls, 
she maketh them friends of God and 
prophets." 

We cannot, in our thought, confine 
this influence to the Bible, but we can 
hardly fail to recognize it there. 

As you read, do you come in contact 
with men who loved wisdom more than 
health or beauty ? In the words of the 
prophets do you feel breaths of power 
sweeping down upon you from sublime 
heights ? In the eyes of heroes of the 
antique world do you see the brightness 
of the everlasting light? In some sweet 
Psalm do you find new and nobler mean- 
ings till you are sure that you are looking 
into the depths of a serene soul that has 
become a " mirror of the power of God 
and the image of his goodness " ? Then 
theories of inspiration will not trouble 
you, for you already have the fact of 
which the theories have been attempted 

explanations. 

144 



IX 

Our Historic Inheritance 



OUR HISTORIC INHERITANCE 

Those who have been reared in a 
newly settled country are likely to be 
peculiarly impressed by any thing which 
savors of antiquity. The children of 
pioneers make the most reverent pilgrims 
to historic shrines. They find something 
for which their souls have been starving. 
To walk along paths which have been 
trodden for generations, and to look upon 
scenes which are associated with the lives 
of great men, is a keen joy. The land- 
scape becomes more beautiful because 
poets have praised it. Turning from 
things which still are in the making, they 
feel delight in all that has been softened 
by the touch of time. 

It is with this feeling that many per- 
sons to whom religion has been associated 
with independent thought comes to the 
147 



The Understanding Heart 

idea of an historic church. It brings some- 
thing new into their lives, and it appeals 
powerfully to their imaginations. They 
had been accustomed to consider religion 
only in its individualistic aspects. It was 
concerned only with the salvation of single 
souls. Now they catch a glimpse of a 
public service and an enduring corporate 
life. The emphasis is changed from inde- 
pendence, with its jealous insistence on 
personal rights, to a gracious acknowledg- 
ment of dependence upon that which is 
larger than one's self. 

The independent thinker is pioneer: 
he has all the virtues of the pioneer, but 
he has also his limitations. It is a great 
thing for him to go, in his sturdy strength, 
into the wilderness and make a clearing for 
himself, and build a home after his own 
plan; but those who have been born in 
the clearing dream of something more 
beautiful. They dream of the beauty of 
fields which have been tilled for ages, and 
of homes which have been sanctified by 
148 



Our Historic Inheritance 

long association. When they are in this 
mood, they are ready to listen to the claims 
of an historic church* One comes and 
says to the child of religious indepen- 
dency : " After all, is there not something 
very crude and very narrow in your posi- 
tion ? You are anxious in your self- 
consciousness to tell what you think 
and what you feel, — to test everything 
for yourself. You are very much afraid 
lest you may be led to accept something 
which is not absolutely true : you have a 
great confidence that you are able, by the 
exercise of your individual reason, to dis- 
tinguish the true from the false. Is there 
not a good deal of self-conceit in this, and 
of the self-assertion which belongs to those 
who have not measured themselves against 
the great things of the world ? Is it not 
as if one were to come to the university, 
not in a teachable frame of mind, not de- 
sirous of getting the benefit of the tradi- 
tion of scholarship for which the univer- 
sity stands, but thinking only of himself 
149 



The Understanding Heart 

and of his own personal opinions, jealous 
of his intellectual liberty, and anxious to 
tell what he has already thought about 
science or philosophy? The answer of a 
riper reason would be. It matters very 
little what you think : the great thing is 
that you should be ready to learn. These 
questions which you imagine that you can 
settle for yourself are greater and more 
difficult than you think. The profound- 
est intellects have been at work upon 
them. The first lesson for you to learn 
is that of humility. You must sit at the 
feet of those who are competent to teach 
you. 

Is there not something like this to be 
said about religion ? It is not a new thing. 
Why should any one person think him- 
self competent to pass judgment upon it ? 
The historic church stands not for what 
one man thinks nor for the opinions of a 
single generation. It stands for the ex- 
perience of ages. What can inexperience 
do but listen reverently to its words of 

wisdom ? 

T«;o 



Our Historic Inheritance 

There are many things in the claims of 
the Catholic Church, and in a lesser degree 
in those of the Anglican communion, that 
appeal to deep sentiments of the soul. 
The claim of an apostolic succession in the 
Christian ministry attracts the imagination. 
It suggests the identity of the life of the 
spirit. It is a tradition of piety by which 
the individual is re-enforced. 

The thought of an historic church 
brings the idea of a real communion, — 
the communion not merely with a little 
band immediately around us, but with a 
great multitude scattered over the earth. 
There is something very persuasive in the 
words of Saint Augustine, speaking of the 
apostle John and of the grace which 
comes to those who look up to truly 
great and venerable men. " This John," 
he says, " was one of those mountains con- 
cerning which it was written, ^ Let the 
mountains receive peace for thy people, 
and the hills righteousness.' The moun- 
tains are the lofty souls : the hills are the 
151 



The Understanding Heart 

little souls. The smaller souls would not 
receive faith unless the greater souls were 
illuminated by wisdom. The hills live 
by faith because the mountains receive 
peace." Only a very self-conceited per- 
son will fail to feel the charm of such 
words. We do not live merely by our 
own thoughts ; we cannot live on mere 
abstractions ; we long to see persons who 
are filled with the qualities we revere. 
Something in our hearts responds to the 
call of loyalty and to the idea of disciple- 
ship. 

An historic church, moreover, offers us 
not merely communion with the greatest 
souls and those whose opinions we can 
accept, but it brings us into a real fellow- 
ship with the great multitudes of the 
lowly, of the weak, of the ignorant. The 
advanced thinker, as he calls himself, trust- 
ing in his own thought, becoming a pioneer, 
and going out into the wilderness, is likely 
to cut himself off from association with 
others, whose thought may lag behind. 
152 



Our Historic Inheritance 

But the acceptance of an historic relig- 
ion means sympathy not only with the 
thoughtful and the progressive, but it 
reaches back through all the stages of 
superstition and ignorance to the very 
childhood of the soul, and it makes us 
feel that we belong to a great family. In 
this great family are the children with 
their fairy tales, as well as the wise men 
with their philosophy : the Holy Church 
includes them all. That is to many minds 
the fascination in the claims of the Roman 
Catholic Church. In this sense it is truly 
catholic : it has breadth of fellowship and 
a warm human sympathy from which our 
sectarianism often cuts us off. Cardinal 
Newman says : " What the Catholic 
Church once has had she never has 
lost; never has she wept over, or been 
angry with, the times past and gone. In- 
stead of passing from one stage of life to 
another, she has carried her youth and 
middle age along with her, even to the 
latest time. She has not changed posses- 
153 



The Understanding Heart 

sions : she has accumulated them, and 
brought out of her house things new and 
old." He tells us how the Church has 
not lost the early hermits, monks, and 
saints, while she has passed beyond their 
thought. They belong to the Church 
once : they belong to the Church still. 
Even though she has been the mother of 
a new race of men, she still clings lov- 
ingly to those who went before. All 
these saints belong to her, and she loves 
them all. 

The Protestant accuses the Catholic of 
spiritual tyranny in setting up an author- 
ity over the individual conscience. The 
Catholic answers that what the masses of 
men most need is not more freedom, but 
rather wise and firm guidance along the 
upward way. They are discouraged and 
bewildered, and they need those whose 
word is definite and whose faith is clear. 
Here is an extract from a sermon of a 
Dominican friar at the dedication of a 
church for working people. Speaking of 
154 



Our Historic Inheritance 

the work of the order of Saint Dominic, 
the preacher says : — 

"They have come to dwell in your 
midst to be your teachers and your 
friends. Life is for most of us a path 
rough enough and dangerous enough at 
best, and we often stand in need of a 
guide and a friend. How hard it would 
be to stand alone and plod along alone ! 
How gladly do we welcome the kind, 
helping hand that is ready to sustain us 
when we stumble, and to help us when 
we fall ! How eagerly do we listen to a 
voice that comes to encourage us when 
our heart is sinking and our courage fails 
at the difficulty of our work ! What a 
help it is to find some friend, kindly and 
sympathetic, who can feel for us in our 
weakness and even in our sin, and help us 
to return to the path from which we have 
strayed ! All this you will find that the 
sons of Saint Dominic have come to do 
for you. They have come with a full 
measure of the great founder's love of 
souls." 



The Understanding Heart 

The idea of an historic church reaching 
back into the ages when our civilization 
began, and because it has such a history- 
reaching out to all conditions of men, and 
embracing them all, is one which is very 
appealing. It is no wonder that many 
who have been wearied with sectarianism 
should turn their backs on modern liber- 
alism, in order to gain what their hearts 
crave. 

But is it necessary to yield to the 
claims of ecclesiasticism in order to come 
to the sense of religion as something that 
is historic and that has a wide fellowship ? 

The modern student of history dis- 
covers that religion as a spirit and a life 
antedates all the churches that are at pres- 
ent in existence. The Roman Catholic 
Church is, after all, modern. In Italy 
the temples of an older faith, venerable 
when it was young, have been awkwardly 
adapted to its uses. It appears as a new- 
comer in the religious world. When 
seriously studied, all institutions are seen 
156 



Our Historic Inheritance 

to be made up of material older than 
themselves. What, then, is ancient? 
What is venerable ? 

The inquiring mind, the primal awe, 
the love, the courage, the hopefulness of 
the devout spirit, — these are the elements 
out of which all religious institutions 
came. Here we have something ancient, 
and at the same time something ever 
new. 

History gives us the record of the de- 
velopment of the higher life. It is con- 
tinuous : there is a succession of men of 
the spirit. Religious ideas are broadened 
and purified as the ages pass. The 
makers of this history were men who 
were compelled to choose between a 
formal and conventional line of succession 
and one that was vital and spiritual. In 
making the brave choice, they seemed to be 
cutting themselves off from the past. For 
the moment it seemed as if they were 
going into the desert places. Listen to 
the Hebrew prophet as he cries, with a 

157 



The Understanding Heart 

pathetic sense of isolation from the human, 
while he clings all the more closely to the 
divine, "Thou art our Father, though 
Abraham knoweth us not, and Israel doth 
not acknowledge us : thou, O Lord, art 
our Father." That expresses the feeling 
of independency in religion. It has a 
strong grasp upon essential truth, but it 
has lost for a moment the inspiration 
which comes from a venerable tradition. 
The brave spirit, even in its worship, has 
a certain sense of loneliness. 

Then comes the other thought, which 
we find in the New Testament when Chris- 
tianity was just beginning. To some the 
new faith seemed to destroy the old sym- 
pathies, and to be the renunciation of the 
old loyalties. Then Paul says, in effect : 
" After all, are we not doing in our day and 
generation just what our fathers in their 
greatest moments did? We talk about 
being cut off from the religion of our 
fathers, as if we no longer had a share in 
the glorious memories, as if we no longer 
158 



Our Historic Inheritance 

belonged to Abraham. Go back and see 
what Abraham did in his day. What is 
it that made him venerable, that makes 
his name reverenced still ? The great 
moment in his life was that in which he 
left his father's house, and in obedience to 
conscience went out, he knew not whither. 
That was the supreme act of faith in the 
old patriarch. Abraham believed God, 
went directly to God, obeyed the word of 
truth that came to him ; and that has been 
counted to him as righteousness. Now 
another crisis in the world's history has 
come. We must judge between a dead 
tradition and a living faith, between fol- 
lowing scribes and Pharisees and believ- 
ing God. ^Thou art our Father,' we 
say, ^though Abraham be ignorant of 
us.' Yes, but Abraham is not ignorant 
of us : Abraham did just what we are try- 
ing to do." So Paul argues triumphantly 
for simple faith in God. Those who be- 
lieve God are the true sons of Abraham. 
Do we not here find the real line of 
159 



The Understanding Heart 

historic continuity ? The same ideals that 
wrought mightily in the past reappear. 
The same kind of character makes itself 
felt again. The idea of apostolic succes- 
sion is but a faint and imperfect symbol 
of what has always been taking place. 

" From heart to heart, from creed to creed, 
The hidden river runs : 
It quickens all the ages down. 
It binds the sires to sons." 

To follow the main current is not 
always easy, for the river is continually 
changing its channel. We must seek the 
real enthusiasms and the living interests 
of men, and not rest content with conven- 
tionalities. There are certain great causes 
which have power to enlist the loyal ser- 
vice of men, generation after generation. 
They never become "dead issues." In 
all the variety of circumstance they are 
essentially the same. 

The struggle for personal liberty is one 
whose history reaches back into the re- 

i6o 



Our Historic Inheritance 

motest antiquity. The battlefields change 
continually, but the battle goes on. Al- 
ways there are the two sides. On the 
one side are men imbued with the prin- 
ciples of absolutism. They are believers 
in uniformity. They would use all pos- 
sible force to reduce all things to their 
own will. On the other side are men 
who revere the soul, and who believe in 
its free and direct access to the sources 
of truth. They are tolerant of the va- 
riations of thought. They are hopeful, 
enthusiastic, energetic. They think of 
themselves as " soldiers in the great battle 
for the liberation of humanity." 

It is easy to recognize the men who 
have been inspired by this ideal. What 
a noble succession of liberators ! The 
despotism which they oppose changes its 
form from age to age. Now it is the 
usurpation of kings, now the arrogance 
of priests, now the insolence of wealth. 
But always the tyrant has been con- 
fronted by the free spirit, which cannot 

i6i 



The Understanding Heart 

be bribed or intimidated. It is the spirit 
which flashed forth in the reply of Nehe- 
miah to those who urged him to give up 
his work, and seek safety in the temple. 
" Should such a man as I am go into the 
temple to save his life? I will not go 
in." 

Men of that temper have conquered for 
us a place of freedom, and by men of that 
temper our liberties are preserved. The 
history of liberty takes us far beyond the 
confines of any one church, and intro- 
duces us to a great company which no 
man can number. Each by his effort and 
willing self-surrender has added some- 
thing to our heritage. 

Or take the conception of religion not 
as a dogma or a ritual, but as an interior 
joy and peace, a spiritual communion. 
This also has had its line of development. 
There is a history of simple piety. To 
this line belong poets like Whittier, and 
preachers like Channing, and mystics like 
Tauler and Thomas a Kempis, and saints 
162 



Our Historic Inheritance 

like Francis of Assisi who needed not to 
be canonized. We follow the line of suc- 
cession till we come to the hill of the 
beatitudes, and listen to the blessing upon 
the pure in heart who see God. And the 
line did not begin there. Jesus recog- 
nized the type when, looking upon Na- 
thanael, he said, " Behold an Israelite, 
indeed, in whom is no guile." 

Or it may be that your chief interest 
is in the practical application of the prin- 
ciples of religion to social life. In phil- 
anthropy and in the eager desire for jus- 
tice, you see something that evokes your 
enthusiasm. Here, again, you are on 
historic ground. You are standing where 
two streams meet, — the stream of ethics 
and the stream of religion. From the 
beginning we may see men who seek 
justice, and we may see men who walk 
humbly before their God. At last the 
two impulses blend, and you find those 
who see in righteousness the truest wor- 
ship. Out of the attempt to unite these 
163 



The Understanding Heart 

two elements have come the revolutions 
and reformations which make so large a 
part of the story of religion. The work 
is still unfinished, it is the uncompleted 
task which each generation leaves to that 
which follows it. 

Over against the idea of one historic 
church, monopolizing all that is sacred, 
stands the immeasurably greater idea of 
historic religion. It is the difference be- 
tween the perennial stream and its tem- 
porary channel. When once we conceive 
of the universality of the religious senti- 
ment, its naturalness and its inevitable- 
ness, we no longer think it possible to 
limit its manifestation to any one institu- 
tion. All exclusive claims savor of sec- 
tarianism. Our real allegiance must be 
to the church invisible which is ever or- 
ganizing itself anew to meet the demands 
of the new day. 



164 



X 

How Religion is Organizing Itself 



HOW RELIGION IS ORGANIZ- 
ING ITSELF 

When we turn from the history of the 
triumphs of religion in the past to its 
manifestation in contemporary life, we are 
likely to be discouraged. The first im- 
pression is that of a decadent influence. 
Once all human activities were under the 
immediate direction of a spiritual authority. 
For the greater glory of God and under 
the rule of the church all that concerned 
the higher life was done. Pictures were 
painted, schools were established, books 
were written, works of charity were under- 
taken, all from one motive. There was 
close connection between prayer and 
labor. A great spiritual empire was ac- 
knowledged. 

The movement of the last three centu- 
ries has been away from this organization 
167 



The Understanding Heart 

which had the church for its centre. The 
several arts and sciences have one after 
another declared their independence of 
ecclesiastical control. This process of 
secularization has gone on till it has in- 
cluded the two forms of activity which 
seemed peculiarly to belong to the 
church, — education and charity. A gen- 
eration ago the president of a college was 
almost necessarily a clergyman. To-day 
the profession of teacher has no connec- 
tion with the ecclesiastical order. The 
public schools and the undenominational 
colleges have flourished. The institutions 
under churchly control are likely to as- 
sume an apologetic attitude, as if they 
were more or less under suspicion. Mod- 
ern philanthropy boldly criticises the 
methods of alms-giving which were prac- 
tised by the saints, and it has established 
new standards of its own. 

What does all this mean from the stand- 
point of the believer in religion? If we 
identify religious organization with some 
1 68 



How Religion is Organizing Itself 

form of ecclesiasticism with which we 
happen to be familiar, then it means that 
our civilization is rapidly drifting away 
from all that is spiritual, and is becoming 
materialized. It would seem as if the 
old ideal of the kingdom of God were 
fading away. 

But is this the view of the understand- 
ing heart, the heart that clings to the 
things that are sacred ? 

We must free ourselves from a mechan- 
ical view of organization, and learn to ap- 
preciate one that is vital. 

" For of the soul the body form doth take ; 
For soul is form, and doth the body make/' 

We are not concerned with the fortunes 
of the ecclesiastical body, but with the 
manifestation of the soul. In what form 
does the soul organize itself? This is 
the question which must be asked anew 
of each age. We must not expect the 
forms to be repeated, for each age has its 

own body. 

169 



The Understanding Heart 

Christianity in the apostolic age organ- 
ized itself in a simple and effective fashion 
for its missionary work. It was not a 
contrivance : it was a growth. Later on, 
when dreams of world-wide dominion 
came, the ambitious thoughts took form in 
an elaborate system of priestcraft. When 
the desire came for a clear understanding 
of its faith, there was the organization of 
dogma in bodies of divinity. When as- 
cetic ideals were dominant, there was 
the organization of monasteries and of 
all kinds of brotherhoods. With the 
awakened thought of the Reformation 
era came the impulse to free investigation, 
and the organization of new sects was 
inevitable. 

What are the dominant ideals and the 
passionate desires of the most earnestly 
religious men to-day ? You will find that 
they are not those of the old theologians, 
nor of the ascetic saints, nor of the evan- 
gelical missionaries. There is no great 
ambition to build up a hierarchy or to 
170 



How Religion is Organizing Itself 

establish a final theology or to found a 
sect. 

The finest spirits have other aims. 
They are more desirous of learning the 
simple truth than of completing a system. 
They have a distrust of any external au- 
thority, however lofty may be its claims. 
They feel that intellectual humility is 
fitting. The missionary zeal, which was 
inflamed by the thought that there was 
one form of faith to be imposed on all 
men, has given way to a disinterested ser- 
vice. It seeks not so much to convert 
men to a certain belief as to develop their 
own possibilities for good. 

How shall this new impulse organize 
itself? We perhaps are thinking of some 
religious organization of the past, and we 
look for it to be repeated. Where is the 
" New Orthodoxy " or the " New Cathol- 
icism " ? We have in mind a religious 
body standing over against the secular 
world. 

But how do we know that such an 
171 



The Understanding Heart 

organization would express the most 
deeply religious spirit of our time ? How 
do we know that the ecclesiastical model 
is the one which the free spirit would 
choose ? 

When we look sympathetically upon 
what is going on about us, we see that the 
higher life is organizing itself according to 
inevitable laws. It is because ideals have 
been purified and enlarged that the old 
ecclesiastical forms have been found in- 
sufficient. They do not express all that 
is really desired. They do not contain 
the answer to the prayers of earnest wor- 
shippers. 

I think it is evident that just in propor- 
tion as a man's ideals are clearly con- 
ceived he will find in some of the so- 
called secular activities of the modern 
world the most natural and direct way 
of reaching his aim. 

Take that prayer for righteousness. 
How shall the passionate desire for justice 
manifest itself? Not certainly in the 
172 



How Religion is Organizing Itself 

attempt to found a theocracy. That has 
been tried. It is a primitive form of 
organization. Not in a rule of priests, 
such as was seen in the Inquisition. That 
was a travesty on the idea of justice. 

The work of organizing righteousness 
Is a vaster and higher one than that. It 
has required more than a special order set 
apart from the rest of society. It has 
been the task of mankind. Kings, states- 
men, jurists, plain citizens, all have united 
in it. The organic result is seen in laws, 
constitutions, social customs and restraints. 
All have as their object the protection of 
the weak against the despotism of the 
strong. The work is yet incomplete : 
our social order has not yet been thor- 
oughly humanized and spiritualized. 
There are reforms which can only be 
accomplished by men who are willing to 
sacrifice themselves for the good of 
others. There must still be the spirit 
of the martyr, the willing witness to ideal 
righteousness. The field for this kind 

^73 



The Understanding Heart 

of activity is in what we call secular 
life. The spirit which leads any man to 
devote himself to that kind of activity is 
one that is in its very nature religious. 

Or consider the import of the prayer 
for truth. " Lead me into Thy truth," 
the devout soul cries. But how is the 
answer to come ? Is it enough that one 
accepts without inquiry a formula which 
purports to be " the truth '' ? That is too 
easy an answer, and satisfies only a super- 
ficial nature. No, the real truth is to be 
discovered only through preparation of 
the mind for it, and through patient 
search. It is too great a task for one 
unaided intellect. There must be an or- 
ganization of those who seek and find. 

The man of understanding heart recog- 
nizes that there must here be no divided 
allegiance. He wishes to know the truth, 
and he is only confused by being told 
what is orthodox or what is respectable. 

Who shall say that the organization of 
the truth-loving spirit is not more effective, 
174 



How Religion is Organizing Itself 

as it is more simple, in our day than in the 
days when the school and the college were 
bound by creeds and made mere feeders 
of the church ? The secularization of ed- 
ucation has meant the casting aside of an 
intolerable burden. 

Or consider that supreme motive of the 
religious spirit, — love. Charity, we say, 
is the fulfilling of the law. To love our 
neighbor and to seek his welfare is to 
come to the very centre of such a religion 
as that which Jesus taught. 

When the desire for service takes pos- 
session of any soul, all else seems to be of 
little worth. But how can one do the 
most for those who most need him ? 

Once the church furnished the means 
for all such service. When Francis of 
Assisi felt pity for the outcasts stirring 
within him, he found the old ecclesiastical 
machinery inadequate, but he doubted not 
that through the instrumentality of Holy 
Church his work could be accomplished. 

In these days, philanthropy organizes 
175 



The Understanding Heart 

itself independently. We have associated 
charities, college settlements, and a host 
of organizations for special relief. The 
tendency of all of them is to declare them- 
selves " non - sectarian." They do not 
desire to be the exclusive agents of any 
church. 

When we inquire into the reason of this 
independence, we find that it arises from 
the fact that philanthropy has become 
more disinterested in its ideals. There 
must be no ulterior design on the benefi- 
ciary. He is not to be looked upon as a 
possible convert or adherent to church or 
chapel. Young men and women are 
taught to go among the unfortunate with 
absolute singleness of heart. They must 
refrain even from the luxury of alms-giv- 
ing, if there is reason to suspect that the 
alms may be a curse rather than a bless- 
ing. 

When John's disciples came to Jesus 
asking for his credentials as a prophet of 
God, the answer was, " Go and show John 
176 



How Religion is Organizing Itself 

the things that ye do hear and see : the 
blind receive their sight, the lame walk, 
the lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised 
up, and the poor have the gospel preached 
to them." When one inquires as to the 
manifestation of the religious spirit in 
these days, the same kind of answer may 
be given. Here are the things which are 
being done by organized effort. Lawless- 
ness is repressed, the weak are protected, 
the poor are not only fed but helped to 
self-support, the sick are tenderly cared 
for and restored to health, the sanctity of 
the family is preserved by wise laws, 
thought is made free and education uni- 
versal, the loneliness of the individual 
gives way to generous fellowship, the 
beauty and joy of the world are shed 
abroad, so that what yesterday belonged 
to the few is now given to the many. 
Is it too much to speak of these things 
as if they were accomplished facts ? 
They, at least, are within the range of 
practical effort. Men and women do not 
177 



The Understanding Heart 

merely desire these things, but they are 
banded together in compact organizations 
for these objects. They are learning ef- 
fective means of accomplishment. 

To understand what is actually being 
done, you must not look in any church 
year-book. You must learn what is going 
on in courts of justice, in the best prisons 
and reformatories, in charity organizations 
and social settlements and asylums and 
children's aid societies, in reform clubs, in 
temperance societies, in public schools, in 
colleges, in trades-unions, in fraternal so- 
cieties, in voluntary associations for per- 
sonal improvement and social enjoyment. 
You must go further, and look sympathet- 
ically into political and business organiza- 
tion. You will find there, indeed, much 
to discourage. You will find the organ- 
ization of greed. But you will also find 
the organization of righteousness. You 
will find clear-sighted and determined men 
in every community planning for the 
public welfare. You will find that the 
178 



How Religion is Organizing Itself 

Golden Rule is something more than a 
phrase : some of the best business talent 
in the world is committed to it. The idea 
of mutual benefit is not merely a theory : 
an increasing number of men are putting 
it into practice. It is a rich and varied 
institutional life that is being evolved. 
Could we but see it all, and recognize its 
spiritual basis, we should ask for nothing 
more than to have a share in it. No 
*^ age of faith " of which we read can show 
greater fruit. 

But, when we have recognized the 
religious significance and the organic 
character of modern life, the question 
comes. What of the church ? We cannot 
recognize it any longer as the sole organ 
of the spirit.- It no longer can control all 
the forces of righteousness. Must it 
therefore pass away as something which 
no longer has a necessary function ? Or 
must it be confined to some narrow and 
remote sphere apart from human inter- 
ests ? ' 
179 



The Understanding Heart 

I think that it is evident that the church 
is passing through a crisis. It can no 
longer be just what it has been. When 
the theories of its miraculous origin and 
authority are given up, it can no longer 
over-awe the imagination. It cannot any- 
longer claim a monopoly of the spirit- 
ual force of the community. We still 
read the chapters wherein Paul writes of 
the mystic body with its many members, 
to which we belong. We realize more 
than did our fathers how vital are our 
relations to it, so that, if one member suf- 
fers, all suffer with it. We know that no 
man liveth to himself. But, when we 
read, we are not thinking of any voluntary 
and limited society. The body to which 
we thus belong is not a particular church : 
it is the great social organism. That 
which hurts it is sin : to be cut off from 
healthful connection with it is the one 
schism to be feared. 

The church is but a part of this body, 
just as the school or the political institu- 
i8o 



How Religion is Organizing Itself 

tion is a part. Its value depends upon 
what it contributes to the welfare of the 
whole. 

And, when in disinterested fashion we 
seek the welfare of the whole, do we not 
come upon the necessary function of the 
church? We have seen how the forces 
of a free humanity are naturally organizing 
themselves. Men long for truth, and 
they build institutions of learning. They 
love mercy, and the result is the manifold 
work of charity. They love justice, and 
justice is organized in law. They seek to 
overthrow evils which have been long in- 
trenched in custom, and they plan cam- 
paigns in behalf of specific reforms. 

But it is possible that in all these 
special activities the larger aspects may be 
forgotten. In the very intensity of zeal 
for a temporary good the lasting good 
may be neglected. The conservative, who 
would preserve the tested virtue of the 
past, may treat the reformer, who sees a 
still higher virtue to be won, as a foe. Is 

i8i 



The Understanding Heart 

there not a fellowship of the spirit which 
should be preserved ? Is there not one 
common impulse which may manifest 
itself in a thousand forms ? In a true 
organization must there not be a correla- 
tion of forces ? 

The great defect of our present civiliza- 
tion lies just here, in the lack of the con- 
sciousness of unity. There is a vast 
amount of specialized effort, but an im- 
perfect sense of aggregate power. Indi- 
viduals devoted to good causes are igno- 
rant of one another, and of any common 
purpose. 

It is possible that in a community in 
which there are multitudes of right-minded 
persons the public life may be corrupt. 
The forces of corruption are united and 
conscious of their strength, the forces of 
righteousness are divided. 

How can the sense of spiritual and 

moral union be brought about? Here is 

need of an organization not for special 

ends, but for those which in their nature 

182 



How Religion is Organizing Itself 

are universal. There must be a thought 
large enough to take in all men in all their 
relations, there must be a fellowship based 
on permanent affinities, there must be a 
harmony deeper than any mere agreement 
in opinion. Let each man do his own 
proper work in his own way, but let all 
have a glad consciousness that they are 
members one of another. 

There is one institution which, when 
freed from its accidental limitations, may 
form a basis for a fellowship which is 
broadly human. The church at present 
divides : the ideal church will unite. I have 
said that, to do the work needed by the 
modern world, the church must be freed 
from its accidental limitations. These 
limitations are indeed the very things 
upon which our churches often most pride 
themselves. They put forth exclusive 
claims, — claims to an exclusive revelation, 
to exclusive sanctity, to a constituency of 
elect souls. In all this they are shut- 
ting the door against more religion than 
183 



The Understanding Heart 

they admit. They abdicate the great 
place of power in order to gratify a petty 
pride. 

Let the church give up every exclusive 
claim. Its real glory is in its inclusive- 
ness. It belongs to God's good world. 
It is vitally related to the whole of hu- 
manity. It belongs to all men, and stands 
ready to serve them in their need. It is 
a brotherhood based on what is broadly 
human, on an inner faith, and not on a 
formulated opinion, on a hunger and thirst 
for righteousness, and not on a conven- 
tional standard, on the heart's sincere de- 
sire, and not on a particular attainment. 
It issues its broad invitation to "who- 
soever will," because it is the allegiance of 
the will that it desires. Amid all the 
diversity of gifts and varieties of useful 
activity, the men whose wills turn to 
truth and righteousness should form one 
firm fellowship. 

To many religious persons, secularism 
is a bugbear. It seems to be the antith- 
184 



How Religion is Organizing Itself 

esis of the spiritual. When one consults 
the dictionary, he finds this idea em- 
bodied in one definition : " Secular : of or 
pertaining to the things of time and this 
world, and disassociated from or having 
no concern with religious, spiritual, or 
sacred matters or uses." 

This usage expresses a common opin- 
ion, but the free church of the twentieth 
century denies its validity. It asserts the 
necessity for a nobler secularism. It re- 
turns to the primary signification of the 
word : "Secular : going on from age to 
age ; accomplished or taking place in the 
course of ages ; continued through an in- 
definite but long period ; not recurrent or 
periodical, but permanent." 

In this sense the church is an organiza- 
tion which is pre-eminently secular. It 
has to do with permanent interests and 
principles. It interprets the life of to-day 
in the light of the experience of past ages, 
and it prepares for the ages that are to 
come. It has to do with time and the 
185 



The Understanding Heart 

things of this world, and its assertion is 
that these things cannot be disassociated 
from the spiritual and the sacred. 

The nobler secularism which sees in 
this world the field of divine activities, 
and in the necessary work of man the 
opportunity for spiritual development, 
and in new moral issues the call for self- 
sacrifice, is needed, if civilization is to be 
preserved. 

The so-called secularism which is in 
reality blind to what is permanent has 
shown itself incompetent to deal with the 
complicated conditions of modern life. 
We cannot live without ideals and hopes, 
and without the worship of that which is 
beyond our present attainment. 

When the men who in their own 
hearts cherish high ideals recognize their 
social responsibility, they will see the ne- 
cessity of an inclusive organization of 
those who are conscious of common 
needs, common purposes, common as- 
pirations. It is not for the purpose of 

i86 



How Religion is Organizing Itself 

gratifying the desire for good fellowship. 
It is in order to accomplish a work that 
can only be done when great multi- 
tudes with understanding hearts work 
together. 



187 



OCT 27 1903 



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